Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a health insurance scheme called, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna (PMJAY)-Ayushman Bharat.
Ayushman Bharat is the National Health Protection Mission drafted by the Narendra Modi government with an aim to provide health insurance coverage to nearly 50 crore Indians.
The budget allocation for PMJAY in 2018-19 is just Rs 2,000 crore. That is not much more than the previous year’s budget allocation of Rs 1,000 crore for Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, PMJAY’s predecessor, which is now being subsumed under PMJAY. In other words, there is virtually no new money this year for PMJAY, reported the Wire.
However, five states including Delhi, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, and Telangana opted out of Ayushman Bharat scheme which is also being called as ModiCare. These states are already implementing better health schemes and will be continuing their own state schemes.
Telangana state which is often in news for its innovative schemes did not take up Ayushman Bharat. The state already has a highly evolved and respected universal health schemes in place, including Arogyasri Health Insurance Scheme.
The Aarogyasri health scheme covers a whopping 80 lakh families in Telangana. The insurance coverage to each family varies between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 13 lakh and in some specialized therapies, there is no limit for insurance coverage.
The Ayushman Bharat in Telangana has an annual expenditure of around Rs 264 crore to cover 26 lakh families while already the State government is incurring an expenditure of Rs 782.7 crore towards the implementation of the Aarogyasri scheme.
Earlier, a delegation for National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), popularly known as Ayushman Bharat, had studied healthcare schemes being implemented in Telangana State to absorb the best practices into the universal health coverage scheme.
The health schemes in the State, including concept designs, medical records, maintenance of patient data and the way the health schemes being implemented were under thorough study by Niti Aayog officials.
The State government is providing health coverage to lakhs of families in Telangana through various health schemes like ESI, Employee and Journalists Health Scheme (EHS/JHS), health insurance for Singareni employees and others.