Indu Bhushan is CEO, PM-JAY
In Ayushman Bharat, primary and secondary healthcare complement each other
There is no trade-off between primary care and curative care; the policy challenge is to strengthen both. Ayushman Bharat does exactly that with its two legs.
Recent media reports, including ones in this newspaper, have raised concerns that Ayushman Bharat promotes secondary and tertiary care at the cost of primary care. These reports attribute these concerns to Amartaya Sen’s recent comments on the scheme, which may have been taken out of context. Sen’s views on the need to strengthen primary care might have been wrongly construed as his disapproval of Ayushman Bharat. Other reports suggest that the scheme, at best, targets a narrow set of healthcare issues and, at worst, benefits only a few rich individuals.
Sen’s reported comments and other concerns can be deconstructed as: One, Ayushman Bharat as a solution is not consistent with the problem — in other words, the scheme is a giant leap in the wrong direction. Two, primary healthcare has been historically neglected and the resources spent on Ayushman Bharat can instead be spent on strengthening primary healthcare. Ayushman Bharat will benefit only a few rich individuals, the doubters claim.
There seems to be a perception that all health needs in India relate only to primary care and there is no need to expand support for tertiary care. There is also a perception that Ayushman Bharat is taking away resources from primary care and benefiting big private hospitals. A careful analysis shows that both these perceptions are wrong.
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