It’s been a month since the Government announced the massive new health insurance program meant to give half a billion Indians free access to health care. Often dubbed as “Modicare”, the scheme has set aside a budget of over 500,000 rupees ($7,825; £5,520) in medical coverage for each family annually. The government estimates that the premium for insuring each family would come to around $17 (£11.93), and the scheme will cost $1.7bn in federal and state funds.

 

 

The burning need for a strong healthcare system has never been more imminent. The move looks at improving accessibility of quality healthcare to the masses and needless to say will have a trickledown effect on the overall healthcare delivery in the country. We look at some of the major highlights of the proposed healthcare scheme:

  • Covers approximately 500 million families with up to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year.
  • The amount would be equivalent to about five heart surgeries in India.
  • Overall plan covers more people than any other government-funded health care program in the world.
  • Public health scheme will allow people to visit the many top private hospitals for needs as varied as cancer treatment and knee replacements.

The initial roll-out of the scheme hasn’t really taken off, but success or failure largely depends on the right implementation and cooperation between the centre and respective states with adequate funding being a key factor. Inadequate provisioning of healthcare has long been a challenge in the country, decent publicly-funded medical treatment is indisputably a step in the right direction. Read full article here.