Why in news?
India's drug pricing authority, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), has stressed the need for better regulation of the country's massive private healthcare industry.
What is the need?
- Pricing - NPPA has made significant reduction in prices of knee implants and cardiac stents in the recent months.
- This is to cut the cost of procedures such as angioplasty and knee surgery and make it more affordable.
- However, several hospitals have hiked prices of related services which are an essential part of such surgeries like doctors' fees and hospital stay costs.
- This is done primarily to make up for the cost of price caps imposed by NPPA, defeating the very purpose of the price control measures.
- Healthcare - India spends roughly 1% of its GDP on healthcare which is among the lowest in the world.
- This has resulted in a broken public healthcare system that few trust and nearly 70% of healthcare delivery being in the hands of private players.
- On the other hand, the efforts to make healthcare accessible and affordable are hampered by the tactics of unregulated private hospitals.
What should be done?
- The regulator thus calls for a better oversight of private hospitals as there is no legal framework at present to regulate hospital charges.
- Private hospitals should be regulated to make the billing process more transparent.
- The health ministry could also look at standardising the cost of certain treatments, so that the prices don't vary across hospitals.
- Instead of privatisation of healthcare services, which even NITI Aayog has suggested, improvements in the public health infrastructure could prove to be more inclusive.
Source: Business Standard
