The Centre’s flagship National Health Protection Scheme which envisages providing coverage up to Rs 5 lakh per family a year is a significant step towards achieving universal health care. The state government could modulate its existing schemes accordingly and make required structural changes. The opportunity should be utilised to double the coverage by bringing in those who are left out of the existing schemes.
The insurance coverage is already in place in states like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and efficiently working in the tertiary and secondary care sector. Andhra was the first state to provide "health for all" with the objective of providing quality healthcare to the entire population under Arogya Raksha Scheme. Karunanidhi introduced a similar scheme in Tamil Nadu which the late J. Jayalalithaa expanded by including small private hospitals.
Some of the states are much ahead in the provision of insurance care, and the coverage is much better. You walk into a hospital, get the procedure done and leave. But my real focus is on the announcement on 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres to be set up in public sector. The budget announcement is however short of the Niti Ayog target of a revolutionary basic package for everybody before 2020. What is heartening is that they are going to strengthen the government health centres. In the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill they had pointed out that doctors are not going to rural areas and remote areas.
But the real problem is that there is no position to accommodate the new doctors coming out of medical colleges every year. The government has no capacity to absorb these doctors. The Centre, while implementing the new scheme, should ensure that no intermediary harasses hospitals especially those in the private sector. The Union government will have to be flexible with the criteria.
Dr R. V. Asokan, Chairman of IMA Hospital Board of India
(As told to Gilvester Assary)
