The draft National Health Policy 2015

This draft National Health Policy 2015 released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare ministry focuses on critical healthcare issues . .This National Health Policy addresses the urgent need to improve the performance of health systems. It is being formulated at the last year of the Millennium Declaration and its Goals, in the global context of all nations committed to moving towards universal health coverage. Given the two-way linkage between economic growth and health status, this National Health Policy is a declaration of the determination of the Government to leverage economic growth to achieve health outcomes and an explicit acknowledgement that better health contributes immensely to improved productivity as well as to equity.

• The primary aim of the National Health Policy, 2015, is to inform, clarify, strengthen and prioritize the role of the Government in shaping health systems in all its dimensionsinvestment in health, organization and financing of healthcare services, prevention of diseases and promotion of good health through cross sectoral action, access to technologies, developing human resources, encouraging medical pluralism, building the knowledge base required for better health, financial protection strategies and regulation and legislation for health.
• Policy talks about making Health as fundamental right as has been done for education. Many industrialized nations have laws that do so. Many of the developing nations that have made significant progress towards universal health coverage like Brazil and Thailand have done so and the presence of such a law was a major contributory factor. A number of international covenants to which we are joint signatories give us such a mandate- and this could be used to make a national law. Courts have also rulings that in effect see health care as a fundamental right- and a constitutional obligation flowing out of the right to life.
• According to the draft The Centre shall enact, after due discussion and on the request of three or more states a National Health Rights Act, which will ensure health as a fundamental right, whose denial will be justiciable.
• The primary aim of the National Health Policy, 2015, is to inform, clarify, strengthen and prioritize the role of the Government in shaping health systems in all its dimensionsinvestment in health, organization and financing of healthcare services, prevention of diseases and promotion of good health through cross sectoral action, access to technologies, developing human resources, encouraging medical pluralism, building the knowledge base required for better health, financial protection strategies and regulation and legislation for health.
• Accoding to the draft document, government plans to rely mostly on general taxation for financing health care expenditure. "With the projection of a promising economic growth, the fiscal capacity to provide this level of financing should become available”
• The draft policy states , government is keen to explore the creation of a health cess on the lines of education cess for raising money needed to fund the expenditure it would entail. "Other than general taxation, this cess could mobilize contributions from specific commodity taxes such as the taxes on tobacco, and alcohol, from specific industries and innovative forms of resource mobilization,". 
• The draft document highlights the urgent need to improve the performance of health systems, with focus on improving maternal mortality rate, controlling infectious diseases, tackling the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and bringing down medical expenses among other things. 
• The policy statement also assures universal access to free drugs and diagnostics in government-run hospitals. However, it proposes to pose public health system as pre-paid services instead of social service.
• While the public sector is to focus on preventive and secondary care services, the document recommends ‘contracting out’ (read purchasing) services like ambulatory care, imaging and diagnostics, tertiary care down to non-medical services such as catering and laundry to the private sector.
• Another significant proposed policy change is that the government actively wants to work towards a “change in mindset” where people move away from “imagining public hospitals as social enterprises that ideally must recover the costs of their functioning, to reimagining them as part of a tax-financed single-payer healthcare system in which, what public hospitals deliver is not free care, but rather pre-paid care.
• Policy talks about Enable universal access to free essential drugs, diagnostics, emergency ambulance services, and emergency medical and surgical care services in public health facilities, so as to enhance the financial protection role of public facilities for all sections of the population.
• Policy emphasize on  the growth of the private health care industry and medical technologies to ensure alignment with public health goals, and enable contribution to making health care systems more effective, efficient, rational, safe, affordable and ethical.
• The National Health Policy accepts and endorses the understanding that a full achievement of the goals and principles as defined would require an increased public health expenditure to 4 to 5% of the GDP. However, given that the NHP, 2002 target of 2% was not met, and taking into account the financial capacity of the country to provide this amount and the institutional capacity to utilize the increased funding in an effective manner, this policy proposes a potentially achievable target of raising public health expenditure to 2.5 % of the GDP. It also notes that 40% of this would need to come from Central expenditures. At current prices, a target of 2.5% of GDP translates to Rs. 3800 per capita, representing an almost four fold increase in five years. Thus a longer time frame may be appropriate to even reach this modest target.
• Policy also talks about leveraging CSR for well-focused programmes, communities or geographies with special levels of vulnerability which require special attention.
• Policy focuses on Preventive and Promotive Care Strategy.