Government is preparing to add 270 million more in Ayushman Bharat – Gudstory

The scheme is part of new instructions issued to all central ministries and agencies running various welfare schemes to accelerate “saturation” of beneficiaries, meaning, covering all the intended persons.

More than 280 million individuals have an Ayushman card, which entitles the holder – a person below the poverty line – to accessible quality health care. The government aims to cover at least 550 million persons, leaving a huge gap of at least 270 million in just one month.

“For us, this is an opportunity to achieve saturation within the stipulated time frame rather than a pre-poll agenda. Multiple communications are being sent to States/UTs almost every day. They have been asked to prepare daily targets for Ayushman card manufacturing and try to achieve it by deploying all resources,” said an official aware of the matter, requesting anonymity.

According to the official, more than 100 million families have at least one Ayushman card – every person in the beneficiary family is entitled to it. Uttar Pradesh tops the list with 46 million individuals holding Ayushman cards, followed by Madhya Pradesh (37 million), Gujarat and Chhattisgarh with 20 million each and Maharashtra (19 million).

“The number of hospitalizations has increased significantly due to the impact of increasing number of Ayushman cards. Now, it is touching 3.16% hospitalization per 100,000 beneficiaries for this financial year, which is higher than the national average of 2.9% as per the National Statistics Office,” the official said.

Questions sent to the Health Ministry and BJP spokesperson remained unanswered till press time.

The government has spent almost By implementing this scheme, Rs 4,200 crore will be spent this year.

One way to scale up would be to target what’s called the “missing middle” — people who are just above the poverty line and therefore not eligible for benefits, but are still too poor to afford private health care. .

This is a common problem with welfare schemes around the world, and identifying the missing middle is difficult.

Nevertheless, the plan is now set to be expanded and there is a possibility that the ruling BJP may include the missing middle of PM-JAY in its election manifesto.

According to a NITI Aayog report published in October 2021, about 400 million such individuals (30% of India’s population) are outside the scope of any health protection scheme.

Professor Sri Nath Reddy, former Chairman of the Public Health Foundation of India, said, “We need to ensure that no Indian is deprived of essential health services due to affordability barriers. PMJAY covers 40% of the population. The ‘missing middle’, who may also suffer financial hardship from catastrophic health care expenditure, needs to be covered rapidly to make universal health care more of a reality.”

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Published: 20 Dec 2023, 11:37 PM IST