Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has made up his mind to create a federal institution like GST Council for the farm sector and healthcare. Addressing the CII Health Summit, Jaitley said “The federal institution experiment of the GST having succeeded…there are two other sectors which eminently require federal institutions of this kind… The GST was constitutionally provided for. Those areas are not constitutionally provided for, but political maturity can impose on governments to try that experiment. One is healthcare and one is agriculture”.
He said while listing the importance for setting a federal body that the centre and state both must spend on healthcare and must have their own plans but he did not say about the benefit that may arise to the farm sector. Jaitley said the Centre is still establishing the institutes while the states already have their hospitals. He also added that the Centre has executed Ayushman Bharat and State also have the same plan to do.
Read Also: Goods and Services Tax Impact on Healthcare Industry in India
He said “All these needs to be merged so that the benefit of these merged resources starts to benefit the patient population of the country. Obviously, it will be implemented through the states, with the Centre coordinating it”. The minister thinks that patient welfare will be much better under the said concept of a federal institution.
Jaitley added “And if you have a federal institution, ultimately this is not a turf issue if my scheme is better than your scheme. It is essentially a welfare issue, whether the patients in my state are better than the patients in other states. Whether they have more facilities. Every state would stand to benefit if this coordination with such a federal institution actually came up between the Centre and states”.
