For all the din over making healthcare affordable in the country, the Union Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, has done precious little.

You may not have to look too far, to run into someone with hypertension, diabetes, thyroid problems or tuberculosis, to name just a few ailments that are on an upward spike in the country.

The Government knows better than anyone else, that the clock is ticking on healthcare and parallel strategies are required — roping in drug-companies, hospitals and health insurance companies - to make medicare less expensive and accessible.

Local drug-makers need to be encouraged to research and make medicines better tuned to local people; more efficient partnerships between drug companies, hospitals and the Government need to be formalised; besides having effective channels to deliver medicines and a mega-booster shot is required to give health insurance that much required leg-up.

In fact, the Government needed to have gone one step further, and like other developed countries, formalise a social security net, where people pay towards getting healthcare coverage at a later age, when they complete the working years of their life. This, even as hospital infrastructure are upgraded to tackle increasing geriatric ailments, and health insurance companies are urged to extend efficient policies to the elderly.

But no such path-breaker came from the Government. Instead, as seen every year, there was the mandatory increase in healthcare allocation, up 20 per cent, besides the much-needed effort to provide health cover to the unorganised sector.

Inaction is one thing, but Budget 2011 actually works against the average consumer by introducing service tax on air-conditioned hospitals with 25 beds and diagnostic centres of a reasonable size.

Making medical investigations more expensive goes against preventive healthcare. But it gets stranger still. In the implementation of service-tax on diagnostic centres, the larger ones that may actually have some quality and service accreditation are the ones in the net. The street-corner holes-in-the-wall seem to be off the hook.

If the Government was indeed serious about putting its money on healthcare, it would have given drug-makers and hospitals enough sops — and then rightfully demanded economical and affordable healthcare services from them for its people.

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