Labour Ministry will transfer the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) to Health and Family Welfare Ministry from April 1, 2015, Parliament was informed today.
"The government has decided to transfer RSBY from the Ministry of Labour and Employment to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare from April 1, 2015, pursuant to the government decision to make it a part of the National Health Assurance Mission to be implemented by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare," Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
RSBY is a social security measure for workers in unorganised sector that provides a smart card-based cashless health insurance cover of Rs 30,000 per annum to BPL family of five with an annual premium of Rs 30.
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Licensed railway porters, street vendors, MGNREGA workers, beedi workers, domestic workers, sanitation workers, mine workers, rickshaw pullers, rag pickers and auto-taxi drivers are covered under the scheme.
The scheme benefited over 3.85 crore families in the financial year 2013-14.
In the current financial year, Rs 312.37 crore has been utilised under the RSBY so far.
In FY2013-14, Rs 885.91 crore was utilised under the RSBY, while the same stood at Rs 1,056.79 crore in FY2012-13 and Rs 922.97 crore in FY2011-12.
About 10,311 hospitals, including 6,093 private and 4,218 government are giving their services to insured persons under RSBY.
Also, insurance companies both of public and private sector are participating in the scheme, the Minister said.
"Government has formulated criteria to measure the performance of insurance companies, besides making a panel of insurance companies of RSBY on the basis of a selection process, to ensure better service delivery and monitoring," he said.
The National Grievance Redressal Commission has been reconstituted to make the three-tier grievance redressal mechanism of RSBY more effective, Dattatreya said.
Further, states and union territories have been advised to strengthen their administrative set up at the State Nodal Agency to make the implementation process more effective.
