Challenges for regulating the private health services in India for achieving universal health care

Abstract

Commercial interests pose a serious challenge for universalizing health-care. This is because "for-profit" health-care privileges individual responsibility and choice over principles of social solidarity. This fundamentally opposing tendency raises ethical dilemmas for designing a health service that is universal and equitable. It is an inadequate to merely state the need for regulating the private sector, the key questions relate to what must be done and how to do it. This paper identifies the challenges to regulating the private health services in India. It argues that regulation has been fragmented and largely driven by the center. Given the diversity of the private sector and health being a state subject, regulating this sector is fraught with the technical and socio-political factors.