NEWS : More than 18 crore health cards have been issued under the Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) scheme so far and over 3.2 crore people have availed the hospital facilities, as per recent statistics

THE SCHEME

• Offers a sum insured of Rs.5 lakh per family for secondary care (which doesn’t involve a super specialist) as well as tertiary care (which involves a super specialist).
• Cashless and paperless access to services are provided to the beneficiaries at the point of service
• Health Benefit Packages covers surgery, medical and day care treatments, cost of medicines and diagnostics
• Packaged rates (Rates that include everything so that each product or service is not charged for separately)
• They are flexible, but they can’t charge the beneficiary once fixed by the hospitals
• The scheme also has prescribed a daily limit for medical management
• Entitlement-based scheme
• Targets the beneficiaries as identified by latest Socio-Economic Caste Census data
• Funding for the scheme is shared – 60:40 for all states and UTs with their own legislature, 90:10 in Northeast states and Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal and Uttarakhand and 100% Central funding for UTs without legislature
• The National Health Authority (NHA) has been constituted as an autonomous entity under the Society Registration Act, 1860 for effective implementation of PM-JAY in alliance with state governments
• The State Health Agency (SHA) is the apex body of the State Government responsible for the implementation of AB PM-JAY in the State