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TS health scheme outdoes Ayushman Bharat

By M. Sai Gopal

The State government’s annual outlay of expenditure towards Telangana Universal Health Protection Scheme is far higher than that of Ayushman Bharath. In fact, the State’s scheme incurs an annual expenditure of Rs 2,000 crore towards insurance coverage to cross-section of the population.

The Ayushman Bharat in Telangana has an annual expenditure of around Rs 264 crore to cover 26 lakh families while already the State is incurring an expenditure of Rs 782.7 crore towards the implementation of the Aarogyasri scheme.

Overall, including Aarogyasri, EHS, JHS, Singareni, ESI, Aarogyabhadratha scheme, CM Relief Fund and State and Central schemes, the State government incurs an expenditure of Rs 2,000 crore every year to provide insurance coverage to 1 crore families, as part of Telangana Universal Health Protection Scheme.

The health authorities here also point out that there will be a lot of confusion in isolating 26 lakh families for Ayushman Bharath out of the existing 80 lakh families who are already availing Aarogyasri scheme.

“This would create a lot of operational and technical difficulties because the entire software architecture of Aarogyasri has to be modified.

There is no logic in tinkering with a tried-and-tested system, which is under implementation for over a decade,” authorities here argue.

Wide coverage for ailments
While the ailments that will be covered under Ayushman Bharath are yet to be ascertained, Aarogyasri provides a wide coverage of medical ailments. In fact, Aarogyasri also covers medical conditions that need highly specialised medical care, including organ transplantation, cancer chemotherapy, dialysis and a clutch of procedures for heart ailments.

NITI Aayog praises Aarogyasri
Before coming up with the software for implementing Ayushman Bharath, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog has studied the entire software architecture of Aarogyasri.
In fact, the State health authorities had given free access to the entire software data related to Aarogyasri to NITI Aayog team of senior public health experts who had visited Hyderabad.

Source: Telangana Today

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