Union Budget 2021-22 Expectations for Health: Along with the world, India has been going through a health crisis due to the unprecedented Covid pandemic. The highly contagious disease of Coronavirus has put the healthcare system and medical research of India under microscopic scrutiny. With just over a month to go for the Union Budget 2021, we are all expecting a significant increase in budgetary allocation for healthcare, research, and development in medical branches.
“The onslaught of Covid-19 has duly woken up the health authorities to the urgent need to raise the allocation for health as a proportion of GDP. Keeping that in mind, the upcoming budget should prompt higher allocation to R&D in biotech, epidemiology as well as pharma in general. Only with increased budgetary attention can we truly harness our existing strength in vaccines and generics. With technology leading to a rise in healthcare costs, higher public health expenditure can make it affordable for common people and reduce out-of-pocket costs. At the same time, the government must relax unrealistic price restrictions and rules in order to encourage investment into developing world-class healthcare infrastructure in the country,” Dr. Tushar Grover, Medical Director, Vision Eye Centre, New Delhi said.
“As India faces the worst ever health crisis of all times, we hope that COVID-19 will at least provide the silver lining in increasing the healthcare budget. There has never been a greater spotlight on healthcare delivery in various environments. No election has unfortunately been fought on healthcare as an issue in India yet. But now with the coronavirus pandemic, the focus is only and squarely on healthcare. I hope that this will lead to an increase in the healthcare budget and various healthcare provisions so that the expenditure spend on health should go up to 3 percent of the GDP as promised by the government,” Dr. Shuchin Bajaj, Founder, and Director, Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals said.
In the Union Budget 2020, the Government of India’s Budget estimates on Healthcare for the Financial Year of 2020-21 were 67,484 crore and Revised Estimates for the same sector were 63,830 crore for the Finacial Year of 2019-20.