While lakhs of families suffering due to high out of pocket expenditure towards health commitments, the Government of India takes a big leap to address their families through AYUSHMAN BHARAT. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced this program to cover around 10 crores poor and vulnerable population. This is a said to be world’s single largest health program that provides a coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family per annum.
Vijaya Srivastava (SPL Secretary, Health Ministry)
National Health Protection Scheme
- Addresses poor & vulnerable families
- Outreach is much bigger than previous program Rashtriya Swasthiya Bhima Yojana
- Coverage increased from Rs 1lakh to Rs 5 lakh
- Families will be covered from SECC data
Aditi Tandon (Tribune Correspondent)
What is the state of healthcare in India?
- Infosys founders wordings (Narayan Murthy) “ Health is the Achilles heel of Indian economy and its recurring speed breaker in the journey towards economic growth of the country
- Government has taken many major steps to address
- Increase in budget about 11.50% over the previous one
- Many significant programs like National Health Policy, maternity bill etc
Vijaya Srivastava
- Ayushman is centrally sponsored scheme
- 60:40 sharing in general between centre and states
- Figure of the fund is flexible to increase as per the demand
Aditi Tandon
What could be practical implementation model?
Two models
- Insurance – Public or Private
- Trust model – Seen effective in states like Andra Pradesh
- States are given autonomy to select the model of implementation as health is state subject
- There are state like Karnataka, Andra, Tamil Nadu are best performing with respect to this health sector
Vijaya Srivastav
Do you foresee any issues?
- Scheme is envisaged through very detailed consultation to address max issues in a possible manner
- Transition plan is properly designed to overcome any sort of glitches
Aditi Tandon
- It’s an ambitious goal which is having no ceiling on size of family
- Raise in annual cover shows previous programs were not aspirational
Vijaya Srivastav
Advantages for individuals as well as country as a whole
- Earlier programs cover of Rs 1 lakh is insufficient. This forces out of pocket expenditure
- Ministry felt the need of realistic scheme to address the issue
- AYUSHMAN – comes to be most easier subscription
- Hospitals include private in addition to public
- We will have 20 AIIMS despite 6 working presently
Dr. Shubnum Singh (Chief Executive, Max Institute of Health)
Role of Insurance and private companies in regards to this new health scheme
- It’s a shared responsibility between private and public
- Areas of concern if exists, it will be from the making space for level playing field
- India requires 1 lakh beds to address the needs of the health sector. This can be seen as a tremendous opportunity to reach the goal.
Aditi Tandon
- Tertiary sector gets a boost from this program. This results in overall growth and dedicated focus.
- Village level wellness centres will be set up to provide better healthcare at grass root level
- But there is a challenge of human resource and funding. Thus a solution to the demand of program can improve employment opportunities.
- Wellness centres also focuses on awareness to prevent serious lifestyle diseases
So finally it’s time to wait and watch how all things fall on track to make this mammoth “NaMo Health care” a panacea to prevailing healthcare challenges.
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