Illustration: Jayachandran/MintSoon after he announced the world’s largest public healthcare scheme in the Union budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley termed it “Modicare” in a Doordarshan interview. More recently, countries in the developing world like China have used publicly funded health insurance to achieve wide coverage. On the other hand, if Modicare allows competition between private insurers and public trusts, it has the potential to improve outcomes. And despite the inevitable criticism, public insurance need not cannibalize the public healthcare system. Should the budget have focused on upgrading the public health system instead?

Source: Mint February 04, 2018 17:48 UTC