The Ayshman Bharat Healthcare scheme announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is touted to as the world's largest healthcare scheme, which aims to provide a coverage of Rs five lakh per family annually and is expected to benefit more than 10 crore poor families and approximately 50 crore Indians.
The scheme aims to bring healthcare benefits to the poor residing in rural and urban India. Precious lives have been lost due to lack of proper healthcare system in rural India, but all this is set to change with this scheme. The scheme aims to target the poor, deprived rural families and it identified an occupational category of urban workers' families, 8.03 crore in rural and 2.33 crore in urban areas, as per the latest Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) data. The poor of the country will no longer have to think twice before entering the hospitals to avail healthcare benefits.
If implemented properly, the vunerable section of the society can avail of the best healthcare services at the best hospitals. The whole ecosystem of insurance companies, third-party administrators and healthcare providers will fall in place. Hospitals will boom where they are required the most to bring their services to the masses, once they are assured of the payments for their services. It is expected that the scheme will have a far-reaching impact on the entire Indian healthcare and insurance landscape.
The move will help the nation move closer to the sustainable development goal of 'Universal Health Coverage'.
The scheme will be launched on September 25, 2018. The Centre has allocated about Rs 10,000 crore for the project.