Published Jun 01, 2026 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 01, 2026 | 7:00 AM
India spent ₹26,957 crore on traditional and complementary medicine in a single year. While private health insurance covered 9.19 percent of Total Health Expenditure in 2022–23, AYUSH treatment remains largely outside standard insurance products.
Synopsis: India spent ₹26,957 crore on Ayurveda and other traditional systems of medicine in 2022–23, according to National Health Accounts data. The figures show that most of this spending came directly from households rather than government funding or insurance coverage. The findings challenge the perception of traditional medicine as a low-cost alternative and highlight a large area of healthcare spending that remains largely outside formal financial support systems.
A 30-year-old woman walked into Hyderabad neurologist Dr Sudhir Kumar’s clinic after spending nearly a year trying to treat her chronic back pain through Ayurveda.
She had low back pain radiating down her right leg, symptoms suggestive of a pinched nerve in the lumbar spine. According to Dr Kumar, she had visited an Ayurvedic hospital multiple times and spent close to ₹50,000 on treatments, medicines, and blood tests, including investigations for arthritis. Yet her pain never improved.
“If you thought Ayurvedic treatment is economical and effective, please read this,” Dr Kumar wrote on X on 28 May while sharing the case.
“Finally, she came to consult me. She would get better with a few simple medicines, physiotherapy, and lifestyle modifications,” he added.
The bill he shared shows where that ₹50,000 went. A single treatment cycle at Sri Ayush Ayurvedic Hospitals included five sessions of External Vasthi, Lepam, Local Abyangam, and Swedam at ₹5,250; treatment charges of ₹2,000; ₹100 for sheets; ₹70 for gloves; and ₹2,550 for Lepam and Panda Swedam, bringing the estimated total for one cycle alone to ₹9,970.
Every rupee came directly from her household savings. No insurance covered it. No government scheme reimbursed it. No clinical record tracked whether the treatment produced any measurable outcome.
This patient is not an outlier. According to the latest National Health Accounts (NHA) estimates for 2022–23, released by the Union Health Ministry, India spent ₹26,957 crore on traditional and complementary medicine in a single year.
That figure challenges one of India’s most deeply embedded assumptions: that Ayurveda and other non-allopathic medicine are inherently “cheap.”
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The National Health Accounts Estimates for 2022–23, released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on 27 May, place expenditure on Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (TCAM) covering Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy at ₹26,957 crore, or 3.52 percent of India’s Current Health Expenditure of ₹7,66,814 crore.
That figure captures spending on non-allopathic care across both the public and private sectors, including government AYUSH hospitals, private Ayurvedic clinics, retail sales of herbal and homoeopathic medicines, and household out-of-pocket payments to AYUSH practitioners.
The Ministry of AYUSH received a budget allocation of ₹3,050 crore in 2022–23. Compared with the NHA’s ₹26,957 crore estimate for TCAM expenditure, the government directly funds only 11.3 percent of all spending on traditional medicine in the country.
The remaining 88.7 percent, roughly ₹23,900 crore, comes from household spending, private practitioners, and retail sales of Ayurvedic and homoeopathic medicines. Much of it is paid out of pocket, with limited insurance coverage and little systematic tracking of clinical outcomes.
The NHA does not credit the Ministry of AYUSH with ₹26,957 crore in spending. Rather, it reveals the scale of what Indians spend on traditional medicine themselves, at private clinics, through retail medicine purchases, and in treatment centres, one ₹9,970 treatment cycle at a time.
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On 27 May, alongside the NHA release, the Union Health Ministry described the decade between 2013–14 and 2022–23 as one of sustained progress.
“The share of Government Health Expenditure in the country’s Gross Domestic Product has risen from 1.15 percent in 2013–14 to 1.43 percent in 2022–23,” the ministry said, adding that “this shift underscores the important role of public financing in the health system and signals that policy efforts are moving in the right direction, towards a more affordable, equitable, and accessible healthcare system for all.”
On private insurance, the ministry pointed to growth as evidence of rising public awareness. “The share of Private Health Insurance in THE has also increased, from 3.4 percent to 9.2 percent, clearly indicating improved health-seeking behaviour due to awareness, and the population’s purchasing power,” it said.
What the ministry’s statement did not address is a category of spending that sits largely outside both government schemes and private insurance: traditional medicine, where household out-of-pocket payments dominate and systematic outcomes tracking remains limited. A patient spending ₹50,000 on Ayurvedic treatment for a pinched nerve enters the ₹26,957 crore figure. Whether she recovered does not.
Private health insurance covered 9.19 percent of Total Health Expenditure in 2022–23, ₹81,012 crore out of a total spend of ₹8,81,359 crore. Where such coverage exists, it is overwhelmingly geared towards allopathic hospitalisation. AYUSH treatment, in practice, remains largely outside standard insurance products.
The NHA framework itself acknowledges this distinction. TCAM is classified as a reporting item, HC.RI.2, because of its “emerging policy relevance and a long-standing tradition of using AYUSH in the Indian health system.”
It sits outside the main expenditure boundary as a separate reporting line: tracked, but not fully integrated into the financial protection architecture that government schemes and insurance are designed to provide. The patient who pays ₹9,970 for a Panchakarma cycle occupies a financial blind spot, visible enough to generate a data point, but not necessarily protected from the cost.
