Ayusman Bharat mission (Nation health protection mission ) ( ESSAY for SSC CGL and CHSL; WBCS MAIN: PSC miscellaneous services ans APO examination )

       AYUSMAN BHARAT SCHEME (NATIONAL HEALTH PROTECTION MISSION)

Ayusman Bharat Scheme under National Health Protection Mission is one of the biggest heath care schemes all over the world. Antonio Gueterres, the United Nation Secretary General called it as the Game Changer of India. It is a health Insurance scheme which covers rs-5 lakh as health insurance per year per family for almost 10 crore poor and vulnerable families in our country. And the most important part of the scheme is that no premium will be taken from any one. It is world’s biggest health scheme covering more than 50 crore people.

 The families will be chosen according to the 2011 Socio Economic Caste Census. To ensure nobody left out especially women, children and elderly, there is no cap on family size and age of the members.

This scheme will take care almost all the secondary and most of the tertiary care ailments. The benefit will cover all the pre and post hospitalization expenses. Even a fixed amount of transport allowances will also be provided.  Benefits of this scheme are portable across the country and a beneficiary covered under the scheme will be allowed to take cashless benefit from any public or private empanelled hospitals across the country. Unlike other private insurance scheme, all the pre-existing condition will be allowed here.

In last ten years the hospitalization expenses increased over 300 % in our country. 80% of these expenses incurred has been given out of pocket. A lot of poor and vulnerable families have become insolvent bearing hospitalization expenses. So the major impact of this project is to reduce the out of pocket expenses.

The expenditure incurred in premium payment will be shared between central and state government in 60:40 ratio. Almost 20000 crore per year will be needed for this scheme but only 1200 crore has been allocated. Though a budgetary support of 85,217 crore also been provided as central share.

Salient feature of this project is including comprehensive primary care that includes non-communicable diseases, geriatric health care, palliative and rehabilitative care services. This scheme will subsume the on-going Centrally sponsored scheme Rastriya Swastha Bima Yojana ( RSBY) and the Senior Citizen Insurance Scheme.

This scheme, though depended greatly upon implementation and infrastructure formation, will certainly bring a change in health sector of India.