Ayushman Bharat Healthcare Scheme to be Rolled Out on Sep 25: PM Modi in I-Day Speech

Ayushman Bharat aims to provide a coverage of Rs five lakh per family annually, benefiting more than 10 crore poor families.

In a much-expected announcement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said his government will launch on September 25 the ambitious Ayushman Bharat healthcare scheme which aims at benefiting 50 crore Indians.

In his last Independence Day ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, PM Modi asserted that his government has been working for the last four years to empower the poor and it will launch the Pradhan Mantri Jan Aroyga Abhiyan on the birth anniversary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay on September 25.

Ayushman Bharat, the National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM) or Modicare, has been touted as the world’s largest healthcare scheme and aims to provide a coverage of Rs five lakh per family annually, benefiting more than 10 crore poor families.

Noting that it is a technology driven scheme, Modi said in the coming to four to five weeks, the testing of technology will be started and efforts are on to make it foolproof.

He said when a person is ill, not only him but the entire family has to suffer.

The government decided to start the Pradhan Mantri Jan Aroyga Abhiyan in order to provide good healthcare facilities to the poor and common people, so that they receive free health facilities in big hospitals and also for serious ailments.

The Ayushman Bharat is a scheme of giving health assurance to 10 crore families or around 50 crore Indians of this country who will be given Rs 5 lakh cover per year, he said.

“On September 25, on the birth anniversary of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhay, it will be launched in the entire country. The result of this will be that the poor man will not suffer from illness, he will not have to borrow money (for his treatment).

“It will open new avenues of employment for youths and people from middle class. New hospitals will open,” he said.

The scheme aims to target the poor, deprived rural families and it identified an occupational category of urban workers’ families, 8.03 crore in rural and 2.33 crore in urban areas, as per the latest Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) data.

Observing that not many people know how big the scheme is, the prime minister said if the population of the entire US, Canada and Mexico is put together, approximately that many people will benefit from the scheme.

He said bringing people out of poverty and empowering them is the remedy and his government has stressed on doing that in the last four years.

“None of the poor wants to continue living in poverty neither they want to die in poverty. To bring them out of this poverty and to empower them is the remedy. In the last four years, we have stressed on empowering the poor,” he said.

He also referred to a report of an international agency in which they it has stated that in the last two years, in India, five crore people have come out poverty line.

“When we do work to empower the poor and talk of Ayushman Bharat, what is 10 crore, what is 50 crore, not many people will know how big this scheme is.

“If I put together the population of US,Canada and Mexico, approximately that many number of people are beneficieries of Ayushman Bharat scheme. If I put together the entire population of Europe, then approximately that many beneficiaries are there in this scheme,” he said.

According to the official, as many as 22 states have preferred to run the scheme on “trust model”.

The Centre has allocated about Rs 10,000 crore for the project. The Health Ministry has launched a formal process to empanel public and private hospitals to achieve universal health coverage under the programme.

Through the mission, the Centre aims to provide cashless and paperless healthcare treatment facility to the eligible beneficiaries in the empanelled government hospitals of the state.

The Centre is simultaneously carrying out beneficiary identification. Under the process, 80 per cent of beneficiaries, based on the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) data in the rural and the urban areas, have been identified.

The Health Ministry has included 1,354 packages in the scheme under which treatment for coronary bypass, knee replacements and stenting among others would be provided at 15-20 per cent cheaper rates than the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS).

“Each empanelled hospital will have an ‘Ayushman Mitra’ to assist patients who will coordinate with beneficiaries and the hospital. They will run a help desk, check documents to verify the eligibility and enrolment to the scheme,” an official said.

Also, all the beneficiaries will be given letters having QR codes which will be scanned and a demographic authentication conducted for identification and to verify his or her eligibility to avail the benefits of the scheme.

The government recently clarified that the NABH is not mandatory for the hospitals to get empanelled under the scheme. However, hospitals with NABH/NQAS accreditation can be incentivised for higher package rates subject to procedure and costing guidelines.

Also, the basic empanelment criteria allows empanelment of a hospital with a minimum of 10 beds, with the flexibility provided to the states to further relax this if required.

(With PTI inputs)