India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
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Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#2The math doesn't check out.
"Each family would get more than $7,200 in annual coverage"; "better health care for 1.3 billion people" and "Modicare is expected to cost the Indian government less than $2 billion annually" seem to be mutually exclusive. There's no reasonable way for health insurance/coverage to be so underutilized that on average only $1-$2 of $7200 would get used.
Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#3What happens when 500 million people start to go to the few private hospitals? It looks like there could be some nice election-year “progress,” but that isn’t going to magically make more private beds appear. Perhaps funding and fixing the public hospitals might be a higher priority otherwise, private hospital prices will increase. This plan has the potential to create some serious health cost inflation. If everyone now has $7200 to spend, that’s just going to raise the prices because long waiting lists will lead to people who are private pay being able to access care more easily if they are willing to pay higher prices. But, “health insurance for all” sounds better as an election slogan than “we are going to fix the structural issues with our public hospital systems.”
Employees not showing up to work in the public hospitals? Pay them more and fire them when they don’t show up. Medicine shortages? Then buy more as well as audit the current usages of medicines to reduce waste. Not enough beds? Buy more. Fixing the public system is going to be far more sustainable than suddenly giving everyone $7200 when there isn’t enough capacity. The math doesn’t work with 500 million people unless they expect utilization rates to stay the same — which they won’t there are probably 10s of millions that don’t use the system at all, but they sure will when they can afford it. I think this politician is making promises he knows will be impossible to keep, but will help him win an election before the people realize that it was an plan with no possibility of actually increasing availability of care.
Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#4The math doesn't check out. "Each family would get more than $7,200 in annual coverage"; "better health care for 1.3 billion people" and "Modicare is expected to cost the Indian government less than $2 billion annually" seem to be mutually exclusive. There's no reasonable way for health insurance/coverage to be so underutilized that on average only $1-$2 of $7200 would get used.
When they say it'll cost $2b I think that's in addition to what's already being spent.
Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#5The beauty of (Indian) democracy is that every 5 years the year before election an innovative world saving scheme that is expensive would be implemented or started.
Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#6> The plan is to roll it out by the end of the year – ahead of elections expected early in 2019.
Wow that seems to be a highly ambitious timeline. I hope India manages to setup the program enroll people onto it, but I'm also doubtful whether it can be achieved before the elections.
Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#7The beauty of (Indian) democracy is that every 5 years the year before election an innovative world saving scheme that is expensive would be implemented or started.
Across almost all metrics, infrastructure, corruption, ease of business, electricity, even cleanliness India has improved on. This isn't just another election year innovation, this is just another list of innovations that have been added, which also include things like investments in clean energy, and providing rural impoverished citizen with gas to cook (people in rural areas would cook in wood fired stoves that would produce a lot of smoke and be terrible for their health).
You can be a pessimist, but I don't see that, and most investors are very optimistic about the Indian market.
Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#8What happens when 500 million people start to go to the few private hospitals? It looks like there could be some nice election-year “progress,” but that isn’t going to magically make more private beds appear. Perhaps funding and fixing the public hospitals might be a higher priority otherwise, private hospital prices will increase. This plan has the potential to create some serious health cost inflation. If everyone…
> What happens when 500 million people start to go to the few private hospitals? It looks like there could be some nice election-year “progress,” but that isn’t going to magically make more private beds appear.
That seems to be the least serious issue with this. Firstly, the coverage is minimal enough (especially considering their estimates of the rate of payout) that I doubt it would have that great an effect on usage. I don't really see why the market would fail to meet new demand in this case, and certainly I don't see why you think that it would be easier or cheaper for the Indian government to fix their public hospitals (especially if you've seen their other programmes, especially public primary schools).
Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#9The beauty of (Indian) democracy is that every 5 years the year before election an innovative world saving scheme that is expensive would be implemented or started.
Across almost all metrics, infrastructure, corruption, ease of business, electricity, even cleanliness India has improved on. This isn't just another election year innovation, this is just another list of innovations that have been added, which also include things like investments in clean energy, and providing rural impoverished citizen with gas to cook (people in rural areas would cook in wood fired stoves that wou…
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Re: India Aims for the World's Biggest Health Care Overhaul
#10The beauty of (Indian) democracy is that every 5 years the year before election an innovative world saving scheme that is expensive would be implemented or started.
Across almost all metrics, infrastructure, corruption, ease of business, electricity, even cleanliness India has improved on. This isn't just another election year innovation, this is just another list of innovations that have been added, which also include things like investments in clean energy, and providing rural impoverished citizen with gas to cook (people in rural areas would cook in wood fired stoves that wou…
>> Across almost all metrics, infrastructure, corruption, ease of business, electricity, even cleanliness India has improved on.
Source?