The Trend of Health Expenditure in India and Odisha and Its Relationship with Health Status

India, especially Odisha, has a long way to go in providing basic health care to the people.The persistence of deficits in the health outcomes of a majority of the country?s population is rooted in the poor state of public provisioning of healthcare. Public expenditure accounts for a small share in total expenditure on healthcare in India, which reflects the low priority accorded to health sector in the government budgets of the country. When compared to the developed and many developing countries, the share of public expenditure in the country?s total expenditure on healthcare appears to be very low for India. Further, India ranks sixth from the bottom, amongst all countries in the world, in terms of public expenditure on healthcare as a proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On the basis of the above discussion, it is felt that health sector would require a significant strengthening of the regular and sustained government interventions, which would inevitably require a much higher magnitude of public expenditure on health than what is still prevailing in India and Odisha. Therefore, as an immediate action, at least the following issues must be addressed in the Union and State Budget. Overall allocation for the health sector should be in increased in the union budget 2016-17, to fulfill the Government?s commitment to increase the health expenditure to 2-5 % of GDP.Overall allocation on Medical Education and Training has to be raised.In the context that post graduate medical education needs to be prioritized to fulfill requirement of the specialist doctors, allocation on this should be increased. At the same time, the Union Finance Minister?s proposal for Annual Health Survey to prepare District Health Profile for all districts (which was slated to begin from 2010) is a welcome step; but the government would need to allocate adequate funds for this purpose. We may note here that no allocation towards this has been made in Union Budget 2014-15. We would expect that adequate funds will be allocated in the Union Budget 2016-17.