Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 23
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched the world’s largest health assurance scheme, PM Jan Aarogya Yojana (PMJAY), from Ranchi, to cover 40 per cent of the national population.
The scheme, one of the two pillars of NDA government’s Ayushman Bharat Mission (the other being the creation of 1.5 lakh village-level health and wellness centres) will provide financial cover of Rs 5 lakh annually for hospitalisation care to 10.74 crore poor and vulnerable families enlisted in the Central Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC).
The scheme will cover costs for secondary and tertiary healthcare of beneficiaries, while primary care will be provided to people at the health and wellness centres being established in villages, close to the community.
Launching the scheme on the birthday of national poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, and ahead of the birth anniversary of RSS ideologue Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyay, the PM said, “PMJAY will provide health assurance to the last man in the line and will offer Rs 5 lakh cover per family per year benefitting over 50 crore people. This is the world’s biggest health assurance scheme. The number of beneficiaries nearly equals the population of the European Union, or the population of the US, Canada and Mexico, taken together.”
In a veiled attack on the Congress, the PM also said “remove poverty” slogans dated back decades but political parties continued to play politics around the poor. “Had they worked sincerely, the lot of poor people could have improved much earlier. But we are dedicated to the service of the poor.”
The PM also recalled the launch of the first part of Ayushman Bharat — health and wellness centres — from Jharkhand on April 14 to mark the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar this year and spoke of 1,350 medical packages across 23 medical specialties the PMJAY will cover. Hospitalisation packages will be offered for serious conditions, including cancer and cardiology, and will be available in all government hospitals and empanelled private hospitals.
As many as 15,686 private hospitals have applied to the Government for empanelment under the scheme.
As of today, 30 states and UTs had signed PMJAY MoUs with the Centre to provide benefits under the scheme in the cost sharing ratio of 60:40. Delhi, Telangana, Odisha and Punjab haven’t signed the MoUs. The annual cost of the scheme for the Centre will be around Rs 11,000 crore. With most states opting to set up trusts to roll out the project, the implementation will work on the lines of the Central Government Health Services scheme, wherein patients avail services in empanelled hospitals which are reimbursed the costs by the Government.
The scheme will roll out in over 400 districts today with the Ministry of Health having already identified beneficiaries in these areas through gram sabhas earlier. “Each beneficiary family has been sent letters containing QR codes. Once any family member needs medical care, they just have to go to a nearby hospital with the letter and any identification card, show it to an Ayushman Mitra which every hospital will deploy and proceed to get medical care and hospitalization. Anti fraud mechanisms have been created to deter hospitals from cheating patients or staking exaggerated claims,” CEO, Ayushman Bharat Mission Indu Bhushan says.
SOME PACKAGE RATES
PACKAGE INCLUDES
Room, bed charges, nursing care, diagnostics, procedure cost and physician fee; consultation and diagnostics pre hospitalisation; two-week medicine, patient food, stitch removal, follow-up consultancy for two weeks post discharge
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