New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday announced major allocations to the health sector. In a bid to provide universal healthcare, he announced a 'National Health Protection scheme' to provide health cover of upto Rs 5 lakh to each of the 10 crore poor family per year.
Up from Rs 1 lakh per family to Rs 5 lakh per family, experts say the only aspect that is new about the ‘grand’ National Health Protection Scheme is the increase in its amount. The reason the new scheme sounds familiar is because Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had already announced the same in his 2016-17 Union Budget.
“The government will launch a new health protection scheme, which will provide health cover upto Rs 1 lakh per family... for senior citizens of 60 years and above age belonging to this category, an additional top-up package of up to Rs 30,000 will be provided,” read a statement from the Centre from 2016.
This scheme, so far, has gone without an approval from the Union Cabinet and its new avatar will now provide Rs 5 lakh per family and aims to cover over 10 crore families.
FM Jaitley, while announcing the health scheme on Thursday, called it “one of the largest healthcare programmes in the world”. It comes under India’s Ayushman Bharat Programme, a move towards universal healthcare.
However, the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) has been brought to the limelight time again over the years, under different names.
An analysis by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) traces how the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) was split into two components of health and social security in 2015-16 and renamed as the Rashtriya Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (RSSY) in 2016 and the NHPS in 2017.
The CBGA analysis of the scheme (in one form or the other from 2012 onwards) shows that its allocation peaked in the 2016-17 Budget Estimate (BE) – Rs 1500 crore. The revised estimate (RE) for the year, however, was Rs724 crore. The BE for 2017-18 is Rs 1000 crore.
Jaitley’s speech on Thursday did not announce the 2018-19 Budget Estimate.
“It is not clear whether the erstwhile RSSY (RSBY) has merely been renamed as NHPS without any change in the entitlement under the scheme. The 2017-18 Budget does not clarify much,” said the CBGA.
The previous scheme, as announced in 2016, was to rollout from April that year. However, with the Union Cabinet sitting on the proposal, and not granting approval, work remained static.
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