In both countries, special interest groups-high-paid doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, drug companies-lobby politicians for health care policies that will be advantageous to them.
Rao said there is ongoing debate in India about how much power the central government should have in overseeing health care and how much the states should have.Īfter Rao’s description of the Indian health care system, Jha asked the audience, “Does this sound like the United States?” Rao and Jha went on to note some of the other similarities between the two systems. To boost health care throughout the nation, the central government-with its tax-collecting powers and therefore greater financial resources-provides support for the states while nudging them to make improvements. Health care quality and access in rural areas lag far behind that of cities. The central government’s only constitutional mandate is to oversee medical education and collect infectious diseases statistics, Rao said. India has a decentralized public health care system, run largely by its 28 states and seven territories. Similarities: decentralization, influence of private sector “What is very interesting is that India spends so little, but there are hospitals there that are comparable in terms of outcomes,” noted Rao. health care spending alone is $2.6 trillion. The entire GDP of India is $1.6 trillion U.S. One big difference? India spends about $40 per person annually on health care the United States spends $8,500. And, in the United States, the passage of the Affordable Care Act represents a major investment on the part of the federal government. And they’re both at inflection points, where there are important policy decisions being made about what the next 5 to 10 years will look like for the health care system.” The Indian government is about to make a major investment in health care, he said. “They both have a mix of private and public, in terms of the delivery side as well as the payment side. “It’s striking to me how similar these two countries’ health care systems are-the two largest democracies in the world-and how different their health care systems are,” Jha told the audience in Kresge 110. After finishing her official career with the Indian Administrative Service two years ago, Rao spent three months at HSPH in spring 2012 as a senior leadership fellow in the Division of Policy Translation and Leadership. Rao is a former secretary of health and human welfare in India (2009-2010) and director-general of the National AIDS Control Organization (2006-2009).
This fact-and what each country can learn from the other as it pursues improvements in health care-was the subject of a talk at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) on Wednesday, December 2, 2012, featuring ], associate professor of health policy at HSPH and a practicing physician, and K. Decem- It should come as no surprise that the health care systems of the United States and India differ in many ways, but what may be surprising is the amount they have in common.