Essay on Ayushman Bharat (PM-JAY) for Descriptive Paper

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Introduction

Healthy people are the foundation of a healthy economy. Therefore, a nation needs to ensure a healthy life of all citizens. Our Constitution also under Article 47 mentions the improvement of public health among its primary duties. 

Ayushman Bharat, also known as Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), is a healthcare scheme launched by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 23rd September 2018 at Ranchi in Jharkhand. The main objective of the scheme is to meet the healthcare needs of around 50 crore individuals belonging to the lower-income group.

Eligibility for this scheme is different for both the village and urban beneficiaries. The eligibility of village inhabitants is decided on the living conditions, income, etc.; whereas, for the city population, it is decided based on the occupation of every individual.

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Status of healthcare in India

India has a vast healthcare system, but there are many differences in the quality of public and private health care in rural and urban areas. There are still only 20% of the population who have health insurance coverage.

Public sector hospitals in India are overburdened. There are less staffs and also facing shortage of medicines and equipment.

Therefore, private health systems are responsible for providing most of the health care services in India but they are very expensive.

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Components of this scheme

Ayushman Bharat Yojna has two main components -

Health and Wellness Centres (HWC): India had a preexisting network of Primary Health Centres (PHCs) that function to provide basic healthcare needs of the communities. These PHCs have been upgraded to Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs), with the objective of preventing non-communicable diseases and keeping a check on the number of hospitalization.

Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY): The main objective of PM-JAY is to meet the hospitalization expenses of the eligible families in such a way that they don’t have to go through any financial crisis. It works in close coordination with state governments in the identification of the beneficiaries and providing them cashless hospitalization.

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PM-JAY Rural

Almost 75% of India’s population resides in villages. Most of them have no access to healthcare insurance. They rely on borrowed money from money lenders to meet their medical requirements. This further pushes them into debt and makes their financial condition worst. Keeping this in mind the PM-JAY provides a health insurance cover of Rs 5 Lakh to poor rural families.

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PM-JAY Urban

When it comes to health insurance schemes, even the urban areas have less insurers. Despite being more accessible than the villages, almost 80% of the households do not have any kind of health insurance schemes. And, remaining 20% in urban areas meet their medical expenses through borrowed money. Therefore, under this scheme, all eligible urban individuals will be provided a health insurance cover of up to Rs 5 Lakh.

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Facilities/benefits

Government provides health insurance cover of up to Rs. 5,00,000 per family per year.

All families listed in the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) database as per defined criteria will be covered. No cap on family size and age of members.

Priority to girl child, women and senior citizens.

Free treatment available at all public and empaneled private hospitals in times of need.

Covers secondary and tertiary care hospitalization.

1,350 medical packages covering surgery, medical and day care treatments, cost of medicines and diagnostics.

Cashless and paperless access to quality health care services.

Eligible beneficiaries can avail services across India, offering benefit of national portability.

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Disadvantages/limitations

Funding is the main concern for the smooth running of this scheme.

The shortage of doctors and specialists is also one of the major concerns, a problem faced by most hospitals across India.

The scheme is limited to the weaker sections of the society identified as per SECC 2011.

Many states lack internal capacity and sophisticated processes to implement national portability which is a key feature of PM-JAY.

Another limitation is that it requires states to contribute 40% of the expenditure, but most of the states are in poor financial condition.

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Conclusion

Ayushman Bharat scheme saves around 10 crore Indian families form the financial burden and debt that they would otherwise incur in meeting their health expenses.

Also, it keeps disease away by providing health coverage to poor Indian rural and urban families.

Hence, the Scheme is not only a positive step towards universal health coverage, it will also help in poverty reduction and employment generation.