Comments on the Budget 2025-26 | Dr. H. Sudarshan Ballal | Chairman | Manipal Hospitals
The major take home message of the budget just announced by the Finance Minister is that it is a middle class friendly budget.
As far as the healthcare sector is concerned a few notable points are –
1. Day-care cancer centres in all district hospitals. 200 hospitals to be established in 2025-2026. This will certainly help take care of the increasing burden of cancer patients especially in the non- metros.
2. Cancer, rare diseases and chronic severe ailments 36 life-saving drugs will be fully exempted from basic custom duties. Adding 6 life-saving medicines and bulk drugs attract concessional duties. Patient assistance programs will be expanded and will be exempt from duties. This will help reduce the cost of some of the very essential but expensive drugs in these serious diseases.
3. 10,000 additional medical seats to be added in medical colleges, aim to add 75,000 seats in next 5 years which will improve the doctor to population ratio.
4. Medical tourism and heal in India a major component for push in collaboration with private sector. Medical tourism and Heal in India to be promoted by easier vias norms and capacity building.This certainly is a very welcome move as India has the talent and infrastructure to attract medical value tourism at a fraction of the cost compared to many other countries.
5. AI development centre for education and healthcare 500 crores allocation. PPP 1.5 lakh crore for infra push through national infra mission – will help health infra and financing.
6. Nutrition mission and poshan abhiyan push across all states and schools. A very important measure to prevent malnutrition and improve nutrition especially in the under privileged population.
7. Broad band connectivity to primary health centres will help in expanding Telemedicine consultations for rural patients at village level which will be a big boon in bridging the gap of lack of healthcare personnel in the rural areas.
Overall, it appears to be a reasonable budget for the common man with some boost for the healthcare sector in specific areas.