New health plan may miss April 1 deadline

The scheme, meant to give insurance cover of up to Rs 1 lakh, is supposed to benefit 400 mn people

The government could miss the earlier target of launching the new National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) from April 1, meant to give insurance cover up to Rs 1 lakh for below poverty line (BPL) families.

A senior health ministry official said, "We are in the process of inter-ministerial consultations. We might not be able to roll out the scheme from April 1 as planned earlier."

The government had planned to end the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) once the new one got going. In the former, all BPL families were to health insurance up to Rs 30,000.

The new scheme was to be implemented by states. "We haven't yet figured what share of burden the states will bear," said the official quoted earlier. Once finalised, the government will begin the process of empanelling insurance companies that will disburse the amount.

Earlier, the government had mentioned that the amount would be directly sent to the hospitals, not to individual beneficiaries.

The scheme is supposed to benefit 400 million people. However, it has no separate allocation in the Union Budget proposals for the coming financial year. The finance minister has instead put extra money for the rural health mission and gor medical education.

Analysts say the average claim for such health insurance schemes has been Rs 22,000 per person; so, Rs 1 lakh should be good enough. RSBY's offer of up to Rs 30,000 for health care costs covers both government and private hospitals. Both central and state governments pay the premium. As on March 31, 2016, the total number of hospitalisations under RSBY was 11.8 million.

The new scheme was first announced by the finance minister in last year's Budget. The prime minister then spoke about it on Independence Day of 2016.