Out-of-Pocket Health Spending Falls to 42.7% in 2023-24

Indian families now meet a much smaller share of the country's medical bill than they did ten years ago. The National Health Accounts (NHA) Estimates for India 2023-24, issued by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on 15 November 2026, put the slice of total health spending paid straight out of household pockets at 42.7 percent in 2023-24, against 64.2 percent in 2013-14. That is a fall of 21.5 percentage points over the decade, and the easing continued in the latest year, from 43.4 percent in 2022-23.

Public spending triples

Money spent on health by the Centre and the states together climbed from Rs 1,29,778 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 4,14,196 crore in 2023-24, close to three times the earlier figure. The government's own share of total health expenditure grew by 14.9 percentage points, a rise of nearly 52 percent over the ten years. Counted per person, public spending on health went up about 2.8 times, from Rs 1,042 to Rs 2,959.

The decade in figures

Where the money went

Public outlay on primary healthcare touched about Rs 1.53 lakh crore, the layer of the system that Ayushman Arogya Mandirs carry into villages and neighbourhoods with screening for non-communicable diseases, essential medicines and diagnostics. Organised financial protection widened too: spending routed through social security arrangements rose from 6 percent of the total to 11 percent, counting Ayushman Bharat - Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, state insurance schemes and medical cover for government employees, while private health insurance moved from 3.4 percent to 10.2 percent as cover spread wider. The ministry reads the trend alongside the free drugs and diagnostics programmes, the Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme, Jan Aushadhi stores, AMRIT pharmacies and the price control exercised by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority.

How the estimates are built

This is the eleventh round of the exercise. The figures are put together by the National Health Accounts Technical Secretariat, housed at the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) under the health ministry, using the internationally followed System of Health Accounts 2011 framework, which keeps India's numbers comparable with those of other countries. Taken together, the estimates are read as movement towards Universal Health Coverage.