Health financing, budgeting and resource allocation are fundamental to robust functioning of public health system. Given the scarcity of resources and competing priorities, economics provides the tools for resource allocation.

The health systems are increasingly plural with both public systems and markets operating side by side. The students will critically engage with debates such as markets, market failure, purchaser-provider split, public-private partnerships (PPPs) and private finance initiatives (definitionally the actual and original PPPs) in health.

Health financing is an emerging theme under public health management. Ever-increasing health care costs continue to be one of the important causes of indebtedness among the poor and middle-income groups. All activities around health services need different forms of financing and the ways in which to pool the revenues.

With the opening of the insurance sector, the health insurance sector has been expanding into wider horizons including publicly financed health insurance schemes. Many of these schemes have been also billed as the stepping stones towards Universal Health​‘Coverage’. Since the larger socio-economic policies influence health, the participants will also get hands-on training on understanding and analysing health budgets.