System dynamics approach to healthcare affordability in India

Abstract

Affordability of healthcare is a growing concern across the world. For India, with a population of over 1.2 billion people and one third of world's poorest, to provide affordable and sustainable healthcare to all its citizens becomes even more challenging. The country faces the triple burden of controlling communicable diseases, managing non communicable diseases, and limiting the deaths from injury and mental health. The public healthcare system is underfunded and underutilized while the private facilities are unregulated and unaccountable for quality and cost of care. The high reliance of the population on the private facilities, low insurance coverage, and high emphasis on curative care than the preventive care is further making the cost prohibitive for the general population. There is a lot to be desired in the areas of Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices, and Research and Development for a holistic development of healthcare system in India. This thesis attempts to model the current healthcare system and how different entities of the system interact to influence the affordability. The simulation of the model projects the affordability in the next 50 years. The study also checks the impact of three different policies on the affordability of care.