Budget 2019: Ayushman Bharat gets Rs 6400 crore in 2019-20

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The Centre,  on July 5,2019 allocated Rs 6400 crore for 2019-20 the Pradhan Mantri-Ayushman Bharat Scheme (PMABY), billed as the world’s largest government-funded health assurance scheme.

The scheme, launched in 2018, provides health insurance cover to almost 40 percent of India’s population, benefitting 100 million families which aims to provide a coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family annually, benefiting more than 10.74 crore poor families or over 50 crore people for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation through a network of empanelled health care providers.

As on June 18, 2019, as many as 3,74,35,078 e-cards have been issued under PMABY.

It subsumes the current schemes—the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana and the Senior Citizen Health Insurance Scheme, and the cover will take care of almost all secondary care and most of tertiary care procedures. 

To ensure that nobody is left out (especially women, children and elderly) there is no cap on family size and age in the scheme. The benefit cover will also include pre and post-hospitalisation expenses, and covers all pre-existing conditions will be covered from day one of the policy.

Benefits of the scheme are portable across the country and a beneficiary covered under the scheme will be allowed to take cashless benefits from any public/private empanelled hospitals across the country.

The total number of hospitals covered by this scheme are both government hospitals and private hospitals presently numbering 16,000 and increasing steadily. More than 50 percent of the implementing hospitals are in the private sector.