New Delhi: The National Health Authority will sign a deal with the Delhi government on 5 April to extend the Centre's free health insurance scheme to more than 654,000 families in the union territory.
The NHA is the implementing agency for the scheme, the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PMJAY).
“As per the plan, the NHA will sign an MoU with the Delhi government to implement on 5 April. The health minister of Delhi and union health minister will join the event,” an official said.
It is the world’s largest health insurance scheme, providing health cover of ₹5 lakh per family per year. It is supposed to have no waiting period or restrictions on pre-existing health conditions.
Also read | Centre’s telemedicine service integrated with Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission
The eligibility criteria for the beneficiary families were initially identified from the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) of 2011 on the basis of 6 deprivation and 11 occupational criteria across rural and urban areas respectively.
An official at the Delhi government said, “The beneficiaries from Delhi are covered PM-JAY based on their presence on the SECC 2011 database. So, Delhi has around 654,000 families and they are mandatorily covered under the scheme.”
“However, this is up to to the State government, if they wish to cover the entire population or not. “Basically, there is no restriction on the coverage of the family as such.”
Top-up promise
The ruling BJP has promised a top-up of another ₹5 lakh for the PMJAY scheme. The initial ₹5 lakhs will be given by the Centre while the top=up by the Delhi government.
PMJAY scheme also offers ₹5 lakh health insurance to senior citizens aged 70 and above, regardless of income. This benefits 60 million senior citizens belonging to 45 million families.
“So, this entire health coverage in Delhi will be ₹5 lakh + ₹5 lakh and additional ₹5 lakh in case there is an elderly person aged 70 years and above in a family,” the Delhi government official said.
Over the years, PM-JAY has benefited more than 80 million people who received free of cost treatment while 400 million have Ayushman cards.
Also read | Centre to train joint directors for Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission
The Economic Survey 2024-25 highlighted positive impact of AB PMJAY in reducing Out-of-Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) through increased social security and primary health spending, with recorded savings over Rs. 1.25 trillion.
In January 2022, on the basis of decadal growth rate of 11.7%, the Central government revised the beneficiary base to 120 million families and provided the flexibility to States/UTs to use other databases for verification of beneficiaries against such SECC beneficiaries who could not be identified and verified.
Many of the States and Union Territories (UTs) implementing AB-PMJAY have further expanded the beneficiary base at their own cost under the scheme using non-SECC data sources (including National Food Security Act, State specific datasets).
Queries sent to the health ministry remained unanswered till press time.
Also read | Odisha becomes latest state in the country to implement Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY
Catch all the Business News , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
Business NewsNewsIndiaCentre to sign deal with Delhi govt to implement PMJAY on 5 April
MoreLess
