A prescription for a long illness returns monthly, and with it the bill for medicines, consultations, diagnostic tests and the travel to reach them. 

Families living on that schedule know the price of a strip of tablets better than any budget speech does. 

They also have a claim to understand what they pay for, and the evidence suggests the public purse in Jammu and Kashmir already pays more of the total than many residents assume. 

The Central Government should be credited for widening access to affordable medicines. The next task is proving that the money reaches the counter where the patient stands.

Government information shows household out-of-pocket spending falling from 62.6 percent of India’s total health expenditure in 2014-15 to 39.4 percent in 2021-22. 

That describes a smaller household share of the financing, which leaves open whether any particular family spent fewer rupees. 

The verified National Health Accounts for 2021-22 put J&K government health spending at ₹4,336 per person against ₹3,169 nationally. 

Government money made up 71 percent of J&K’s health spending, while the national figure was 48 percent. 

Households here paid ₹1,581 per person out of pocket, against ₹2,600 nationally, and total spending reached ₹6,104 per person against ₹6,602. 

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These figures cover the whole Union Territory, rather than the Kashmir division alone. A newer 2022-23 report exists, but mixing years would blur the comparison.

Two of these numbers invite misuse. 

J&K’s 25.9 percent household share measures a slice of health spending and says nothing about the portion of a resident’s income that goes to care. 

The ₹1,866 crore in the 2026-27 budget is the Health and Medical Education capital allocation. Salaries and routine services lie elsewhere in the accounts, so dividing that sum by the population would invent a per-person figure that no document supports. 

Public funding plainly has a large load here, and........

© Kashmir Observer