The Narendra Modi government is considering extending its pet Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) programme to around two crore additional families—over and above the cap of 10.76 crore— News18.com has learnt.
Towards this, highly placed government sources said, the National Health Authority (NHA) may also start considering databases other than the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) to identify and reach the target beneficiaries for the scheme.
AB PM-JAY is the world’s largest government-funded public health insurance scheme that seeks to provide a cover of Rs 5 lakh per annum each to 10.76 crore poor and vulnerable families (over 50 crore beneficiaries) for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation.
NHA is the implementing authority of the programme and the beneficiaries, so far, are identified only on the basis of the SECC data.
A senior government official involved in the implementation of the scheme said that the plans to extend the coverage of the Ayushman Bharat programme to nearly two crore additional families are subject to approval from the union cabinet.
“The additional databases will not only help reach the current number of laid-down target beneficiaries of AB PM-JAY but also help reach the additional beneficiaries, if and when they go up,” the official said.
As of November 2021, the NHA had generated around 17 crore Ayushman Bharat cards— 10.66 crore PM-JAY cards and 5.85 crore state cards.
Sources said the NHA will look at other databases such as the National Food Security Act, which covers over 80 crore people to ensure the scheme reaches all target beneficiaries.
“Aside from the ration card holders, we will also look at databases of Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana,” the official quoted above said.
He added that the database of Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Suraksha Bima Yojana and also the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana could also be considered, even though the latter’s beneficiaries are drawn from the SECC data.
As reported by News18.com in November, the Ayushman Bharat scheme is set to undergo a reboot, as part of which more private hospitals will be brought on board. Incentives are being planned to encourage them to join the programme, such as reducing the turnaround time for reimbursing their expenditures.
At present, 23,000 hospitals are empanelled under the health insurance scheme. This includes 9,361 private and 13,470 public hospitals.
The government in October had revised the rates of around 400 procedures under the scheme and added a new medical package related to black fungus management.
Last month, the NHA invited a Request for Proposal to select a private agency for its overall branding and promoting awareness of its schemes and programmes among its target audience by way of designing and developing creative content for print as well as audio-visual media.
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