PM Modi's ambitious mega health insurance scheme soft-launched

NEW DELHI: Pilot trials for the Centre’s ambitious Rs 5 lakh health insurance scheme, now re-christened as Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Abhiyan, began in select districts across the country on Wednesday even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his Independence Day speech that the programme would be launched nationwide on September 25. Top officials in the National Health Agency, a nodal agency under the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry which is overseeing the implementation of the scheme, told Express that the soft-launch was being carried out in about 110 districts in 14 states and Union Territories.

Through the programme, the government aims to provide healthcare services requiring hospitalisation to about 10 crore families, i.e., around 50 crore individuals. The states and UTs where the beneficiaries can now avail cashless treatment in select hospitals include Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Chandigarh and Daman and Diu.

Government functionaries said the trials were being carried out to ensure that the integrated software developed for the scheme is able to seamlessly perform the multiple tasks of beneficiary identification, hospital empanelment, transaction management and merger with state schemes.

In his speech, the PM stressed on technology and transparency for successful implementation of the scheme. “Technological intervention will remove the hurdles for the common man in accessing various facilities. With this objective, robust technological tools have been developed,” he said. Indu Bhushan, CEO of the scheme, said beneficiaries in select districts are being given cards—Tara Devi of Rudraprayag in Uttarakhand being the first—using which they can start availing the services.

He, however, conceded that the nationwide launch would probably exclude the states reluctant to come on board.His deputy Dinesh Arora said the process of distributing cards to all the beneficiaries in states which are ready to roll out the programme will be completed by September 15.Ministry insiders said that going by the experience of GST launch last year, hen it faced technical glitches initially, the PM only announced the ‘testing’ rather than a ‘roll-out’.