India faces a triple-disease burden of maternal and child health, infectious, and non-communicable diseases. This is despite India’s status as the third-largest economy in the world, with annual spending of over Rs6 trillion on healthcare on its 1.3 billion population. What prevents India’s healthcare system from delivering world-class services, especially for the over 800 million people of rural India? India’s tax-based funding of healthcare is far too low and barely supports a government-owned health system which is almost exclusively focused on basic maternal and child health. Health insurance covers less than 5% of total health expenditure. The formal private network is a minuscule component of India’s health sector and is focused on secondary and tertiary care for urban India.

 

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