I believe that India will become the first country in the world to dissociate healthcare from affluence. In our lifetime we will see millions of people, still perhaps living in slums with no running water or sanitation, but when they are unwell, they will have access to high-tech healthcare with dignity, like in the developed world. There will be a gross disconnect between the place they live and the quality of healthcare they will receive. This can only happen in India. It cannot happen in China despite their bigger economy. I say this with conviction since we produce the largest number of doctors, nurses and medical technicians in the world. Outside the US, we have the largest number of USFDA-approved drug manufacturing units. We have all it takes to emerge as the largest and the best healthcare providers in the world in a short period, provided we enforce some regulatory reform to address the delivery system.

First and foremost, the government should become a health insurance provider than a healthcare provider. Can the government run a software company or a hotel? They can’t: these are complicated businesses. Believe me, healthcare is a hundred times more complicated than these businesses. When we suggest that the government should become a health insurance provider, we are not talking about Mediclaim type of insurances with Rs. 2,000/- premium. We are talking about health insurance where the premium is 5-10 rupees per month. Six years ago when we launched a now well-known programme, called Yeshaswini micro-health insurance, with a premium of five rupees per month, everyone laughed at us. Today we have 3 million farmers subscribing to the scheme by paying five rupees per month, and the scheme has been adopted all across the state. Andhra Pradesh changed the model slightly with the government paying the entire premium for the BPL cardholders. We are opposed to the idea of poor people not paying anything. We want them to contribute a tiny amount of money in installments. But for this to happen, the government should create a vehicle for people to pay a small amount whenever they can.

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