NEW DELHI: The central government plans to provide 30 crore Ayushman cards under the ambitious Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) to poor and vulnerable families by March 31 next year.
So far, over 17 crore cards have been issued since the launch of the scheme in 2018, said the National Health Authority (NHA) Chief Executive Officer R.S. Sharma in an interview with this newspaper. NHA is the implementing agency for India’s flagship public health insurance programme.
“Our target is to provide 30 crore cards in this financial year as we have to reach 50 crore beneficiaries, which form the bottom 40 percent of the Indian population. We want to be proactive. It may look like a plastic card, but for people, it’s like an empowerment tool,” he said.
The scheme, billed as the world’s largest government-funded public health insurance scheme, seeks to provide 50 crore beneficiaries a health cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation in both private and government hospitals.
Seeing the slow pace of providing health cards for the people, Sharma said they changed the rules last year when he took over to speed up things.
Earlier, beneficiaries, based on deprivation and occupational criteria of Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 across rural and urban areas, used to get their cards made after payment of Rs.30. When it was seen that they were not coming forward due to various reasons, the rules were changed, and now the NHA is providing them the cards.
For this, they have tied up with each states’ Jan Sewa Kendra, a common service center, to not only make the cards but to distribute them too.
“We have named this scheme Aapke Dwar Ayushman and launched it with renewed vigor. We are focussing on states like Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh,” he added.
He said states like Odisha, Delhi, and West Bengal, which withdrew from the scheme in January 2019, have not joined the cashless system. Telangana joined the scheme for which the central government provides 60 percent of the funds, this year.
“30 states and union territories are part of this scheme,” he added.
Sharma said they have developed a network of nearly 25,800 public and private hospitals, of which 10,700 are private healthcare facilities, whereas 15,100 are public healthcare establishments.
“We not only want to reach all the beneficiaries but also want to empanel as many hospitals as possible,” Sharma added.