Comments
The NITI Aayog has sought the World Bank’s assistance to provide it information and expertise on fraud detection and prevention to ensure no embezzlement of funds takes place in the Centre’s ambitious Ayushman Bharat National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM). The World Bank assistance is being sought as it has international experience in this field.
According to a source in the NITI Aayog, the World Bank is likely to submit by May 15 a report on how other countries where such a health insurance mechanism is in place, ensure that there there is no fraud or corruption under the scheme.
“We will very carefully review the recommendations from the World Bank, assess their applicability or relevance in the Indian context and implement them to ensure there is no misuse and fraud under the Ayushman Bharat National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM), which will provide coverage of Rs 5 lakh to 10 crore poorest families of the country,” AB-NHPM Chief Executive Officer Indu Bhushan said.
Besides, the Health Ministry has also proposed that insurance companies will have to mandatorily refund excess premium if the claim ratio turns out to be less than 85 per cent under the scheme, to ensure that insurance agencies do not make windfall gains from a scheme which aims at supporting the poor on health treatment.
Touted as the world’s largest government-funded healthcare insurance programme, ‘AB-NHPM’ will provide coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family annually and benefit more than 10 crore families belonging to the poor and vulnerable sections of society.
The centrally-sponsored scheme will target deprived rural families and an identified occupational category of urban workers’ families, who constitute 8.03 crore in rural and 2.33 crore in urban areas, respectively, as per the latest Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 data, and will cover around 50 crore people.
The Health Ministry has prepared a detailed timeline to ensure completion of all steps to enable rolling out of the scheme anytime after July, while allocating around Rs 10,000 crore for the project.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.