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Can a National Health care Policy like Obama Care be rolled out in India?

According to some latest statistics, 85% of Americans are covered by health insurance policies like Medicare, Private insurance, Medicaid, or covered through their employer. The Americans who are already covered by insurance do not have to follow Obama Care necessarily, but they can avail majority of Obama Care's new benefits and protections. Obama Care, also known as The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,  was brought into law in the year 2010, which requires people to have insurance by 2014, requires employers to cover permanent workers by 2015, and develops Medicaid in the year 2014.

An open enrolment in Obama will continue till March 31st, 2014. For those who are still not aware how a health insurance works, here is a quick replay: you need to pay a monthly premium for having coverage for every month. If your premium rate is high then you would be responsible for fewer out-of-pocket expenses during a medical emergency. Plus, you can utilize better group of doctors and providers. All plans that will start after 2014 will put forward the same benefits, rights and protections. However, owing to the changes likely to happen in the Affordable Care Act, some insurance companies were either terminating plans or raising prices.

Although the amendments permit insurance companies to expand non-grandfathered plans till 2015, and you are getting protected against unfair rate hikes, your insurance company may run from pillar to post to pursue the consumers for “upsell” over the uncertainty of the law. In short, if you receive a notification from the insurance company telling you about a drastic rate increase, they may not tell you the complete story. You have to be vigilant enough to visit the marketplace and talking to brokers for the most suitable insurance option for your family. Now the question arises that whether something like The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would prove to be successful stint in India or not?

It has been anticipated that the healthcare industry in India can grow by $40 billion in the coming years. Health care services in India have shown major improvement over the last few decades. The health care industry in India is expected to outshine China by the year 2030 in relation to population expansion. For this reason, it is one of the indispensable duties of the state to elevate the standard of living, nutrition level, and eventually improve the public health.  The new healthcare system introduced by Obama encourages the use of generic drugs. The reason being almost 90% of American patients have co-payment on their insurance, encouraging them to use generics that are low in price as opposed to brand-name drugs. For instance, if you take a generic medicine for cholesterol then it will not be more than three dollars a month. When people move to use of generic drugs, the out-of-pocket automatically drops.

If an equivalent act of Obama care is introduced in India, it will naturally prove to be pocket-friendly for many insured people due to use of generic drugs. The quickly increasing Indian health care industry is one of the largest sectors of the country in terms of both employment and revenue.  The constant increase in the health insurance comparison is deemed one of the major reasons for the expansion in the healthcare industry of India. In addition, the increase in the infectious and chronic degenerative diseases is also contributing to the growth of healthcare sector of India.

Whether Obama care reform gets rolled out in India or not is a different story altogether, but for now India is getting indirectly getting benefitted from Obama care since approximately 40% of the generic drugs that are sold in America now are exported from India, and because of this the pharmaceutical industries are going to witness a new boost .