New Delhi: Budget 2025 has many talking about the hits and misses – the biggest hit being new tax slabs that came with a lower TDS bracket and a reformed regime that reduces direct income tax, Rs 0 for income up to Rs 1 lakh per year. However, in the healthcare sector particularly, experts are impressed with reforms introduced to support cancer patients and those dealing with chronic and rare diseases. But in an interaction with News9Live, Dr Naresh Trehan, MD of Medanta Hospital, shared his take on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget.
“Admirable, within the constraint of what is being seen in the economy today, connectivity and worldwide not-so-healthy economic conditions, it is a good decision. However, in the healthcare sector particularly, what was said in July is still being carried on. So those were the allocations that continue to be the same. So there is no addition to that. There is still, despite everything that the government has been able to do, which is still significant, there is a burden on people for healthcare. We need to progressively try to eliminate the cost or reduce the cost wherever it is possible for the government to help,” said Dr Trehan.
Would you say that concerning the healthcare sector, this Budget takes a step towards making India a developed country from a developing country?
It is a start. Like the ambition that our PM has expressed, we should be a developed nation by 2047. Vikasit Bharat and these are all steps towards that because unless we have a broad-based manufacturing sector, we have the requisite skills to do so, we won’t be able to accomplish it. So, the efforts that we are talking about, 10,000 new medical seats, five centres of excellence, and medical tourism can be a very important development because there is a huge potential in getting inward remittances from patients who travel to India. So we do have the best medical tourist site to be found and we have not been able to exploit it fully. Therefore, the government’s attention is required towards that. So it is a good move and it will help double or triple the sector in the next one or two years.
A miss in this year’s Budget for the healthcare sector
Basically, we are spending a much lower percentage of the GDP on healthcare as compared to neighbouring countries that are economically weaker. So the stated goal of the government is to go towards 2.5% of the Budget. The Budget also keeps increasing, so unless a giant step is taken to catch up, it may or may not happen. Therefore, the purpose is to ensure that every person standing on Indian land should get decent healthcare. To make it affordable, the taxation structures should be rationalised so that this saving is guaranteed by the private sector or government to be passed on to a patient. If that happens, the burden on a patient becomes much less which is the whole idea. So there are many instruments like the GST because in the health sector, you don’t get a set of because we pay taxes on the input and not the patient.
Budget 2025: Dr Naresh Trehan said that the Budget could have allocated more towards healthcare sector. Health News Health News: Latest News from Health Care, Mental Health, Weight Loss, Disease, Nutrition, Healthcare
