Budget wishlist: Here are the key challenges in health care sector

Key challenges
 

Stress on infrastructure: The number of beds in India per 1,000 people is between 1 to 1.1 vis a vis 2.7 as the world average. During the second wave, the entire country faced acute shortage of medical infrastructure

Shortage of skilled human resource: Covid-19 has further highlighted the need for adequate health care workforce  

High out-of-pocket expenditure on health: India has one of the highest levels of out-of-pocket expenditure (>50% of the total health care expenditure) globally 

Drop in medical value travel: Covid and limited overseas flights has prevented foreigners coming to India to avail of treatment

Import of medical devices: India has an import dependency for 75-80% of medical devices. Schemes like production-linked incentive should help cut the dependency

Low reimbursement rates: Low reimbursement rates and delays in reimbursement make it unatt­ractive for the private firms to take part in the programmes

Industry ask
 

Incentivise creation of infra: Creation of more capacity would not be done by the private sector on marginal cost. The Centre needs to incentivise the sector 

Mandate PPP in other clinical procedures and hospitals like it has been done in dialysis. This will encourage private sector participation, improve outcomes  

Exempt hospitals from GST on input services. Output GST rates to be set at 0-5% or some nom­inal rate to enable onput GST transition   

Tax sops:  Reduce income tax rates from 25% to 15% for establishing new private hospitals 

REIT: Health care-focused REITs needs to be encouraged to finance infrastructure