Financing Healthcare for All in India: Towards a Common Goal

India continues to have among the lowest public health budgets in the world at just over 1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and it gets reflected in the performance of the public healthcare delivery system – be it in the form of user charges acting as a major access barrier, decaying infrastructure, severe staff shortages or unavailability of medicines. The public and the private sector remain notoriously unaccountable. Despite the country’s newfound middle-income status, the ineffectiveness of the Indian health system and characteristically high health-related out-of-pocket hospital payments have pushed around 60 million people below poverty line; the number is equivalent to the population of the United Kingdom.