The Fifteenth Finance Commission held its 2nd meeting with the High Level Group of Health Sector constituted by the Commission today. The Chairman and the Members of the Commission had an in-depth discussion on India’s Health Sector in a meeting under the convenor-ship of Dr. Ranveer Guleria, Director, AIIMS on the following issues:
The Commission was represented by the Chairman Shri N.K. Singh, Member Shri Anoop Singh, Shri Ashok Kumar Lahiri, Secretary Shri Arvind Mehta and other officers.
The experts who had attended the meeting included Dr. Naresh Trehan, Dr Devi Shetty, Chairman, Narayana Health City, Bangalore, Dr. K. Sreenath Reddy, President of Public Health Foundation of India, Dr. Deelip Goving Mhaisekar, Vice Chancellor, Maharashtra University of Health Science, Pune, Dr. Bhabatosh Biswas,Professor and HOD of Cardio Thoracic Surgery, R.G. Kar Medical College, Kolkata, Dr. Rajeev Kumar, Dr. R.P. Aarti Vij AIIMS New Delhi on behalf of Dr. Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS and others. The High Level Group deliberated on very issues of medical education, accesses to health care and related issues. The Group is expected to finalise its recommendations to the Commission after a 3rd meeting towards the end of April, 2019.
The main issues that were taken up at the meeting were:-
(a) To evaluate the existing regulatory framework in the Health sector and examine its strength and weaknesses for enabling a balanced yet faster expansion of the health sector keeping in view India’s Demographic profile.
(b) To suggest ways and means to optimise the use of existing financial resources and to incentivise the State Governments effort on fulfillment of well-defined health parameters, in India.
(c) To holistically examine best international practices for the health sector and seek to benchmark our framework to these practices for optimising benefits keeping in mind our local issues.
The Chairman announced at the meeting that ‘Health and Education’ would be a special theme of the Fifteenth Finance Commission. It may be recalled that every Finance Commission has a special theme – ‘GST Restructuring’ was the special theme of the Thirteenth Finance Commission headed by Shri Vijay L. Kelkar.