Budget focus is to make healthcare accessible: Max Bupa

By Ashish Mehrotra

The Union Budget 2020 takes a holistic approach to enable growth at a grassroot as well as industry and corporate level.

The clear focus of the budget is to make healthcare more accessible with increased infrastructure, as the investment in the healthcare sector has gone up from the previous year. The allocation of additional Rs 69,000 crore is a significant step to improve the overall wellbeing of the citizens of the country.

The expansion of Ayushman Bharat scheme is another big step to fulfil the need gap in secondary and tertiary care, especially for the economically weaker sections of the society.

The scheme has benefited many people, since its launch, who needed medical care but didn’t have adequate funds to support. Ayushman Bharat scheme has also played a huge role in increasing awareness and acceptance of health insurance amongst all sections of the society.

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Further, the setting up of more hospital infrastructure in Tier-II and III cities under PPP model via viability gap funding, will further be a boost for the healthcare ecosystem and benefit underprivileged families which were devoid of basic medical facilities.

India has recorded highest out of pocket expenditure on healthcare as compared to other developing countries. The measures proposed in the budget will support to regulate the gap and play an important role in making health a priority for one and all and creating further awareness for health insurance.

However, the budget didn’t address the long pending request of the health insurance industry to remove or minimise GST slab for health insurance premiums paid. As health insurance penetration is still low in the country, change in the GST slab could have been a big driving factor for the consumers to invest in health insurance.

(The author is MD & CEO, Max Bupa Health Insurance)