The lingering COVID-19 crisis is a good time to revive an issue that is, oddly, slow to come to life in India — universal health care (UHC). Meanwhile, UHC has become a well-accepted objective of public policy around the world. It has even been largely realised in many countries, not only the richer ones (minus the United States) but also a growing number of other countries such as Brazil, China, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Some of them, such as Thailand, made a decisive move towards UHC at a time (20 years ago) when their per capita GDP was no higher than India’s per capita GDP today. The time has come for India — or some Indian States at least — to take the plunge.
The basic idea of UHC is that no one should be deprived of quality health care for the lack of ability to pay. This idea was well expressed — in archaic words perhaps — by Aneurin Bevan, the fiery founder of the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain. “No society,” he said, “can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.” The same idea inspired the Bhore Committee report of 1946, where a case was made for India to create its own NHS-type health-care system.
