Universal health care in India: the time is right

Summary: India has supported the ideal of health for all since it become an independent nation more than 60 years ago. The Bhore Committee report1 in 1946 recommended a national health system for delivery of comprehensive preventive and curative allopathic services through a rural-focused multilevel public system, financed by the government, through which all citizens would receive care irrespective of their ability to pay. However, a newly independent India faced monumental challenges in 1947. The country had be en divided by a bloody partition, poverty was widespread, the economy was weak, and the administrators were new