India's Health System Financing and Delivery at a Cross Roads

Public health spending in India hovers around 1% of the GDP, while the national health policy aims at taking it up to 2.5% by the end of the 12^th five-year plan. Earlier efforts made by the successive governments in strengthening the health system yielded mixed results. There persist large health disparities between states, between rural and urban populations. Government funded health insurance schemes are limited in its scope in reducing out-of-pocket expenditure by the poor households and as a consequence, they rely mostly on unregulated private health sector. A large proportion of the population is impoverished because of these expenditures and suffers the adverse consequences of poor quality of care. India needs to follow a prudent strategy to achieve universal health care for all through leveraging available resources in public and private sector with appropriate state specific design within the overall national framework.