Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that with political maturity, Ayushman Bharat, the cashless insurance scheme for the poor, can become truly federal.

He said although functioning of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime has been enshrined in the Constitution and is an example of federal functioning, healthcare is not. “However, there should be least resistance to running healthcare systems in a federal way as it is no longer a turf war between states, on who provides better healthcare, but becomes an issue of larger welfare,” he stated.

Jaitley went into rewind mode and said before the Ayushman Bharat scheme was launched, an alternative to launching the insurance-based scheme was also being discussed. Jaitley was speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) Health Summit in the Capital on Thursday.

“The alternative was to first build tertiary-care hospitals in all districts and then man them with resources over five to 10 years,” Jaitley said.

He also said while 3.8 crore people were earlier filing their tax returns, the number filing their returns has almost doubled, as also more revenue is being generated at the Central and state levels on the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, which has led to the starting of social schemes such as the Ayushman Bharat scheme. “The challenge now lies in implementing the scheme effectively,” he noted.

Jaitley emphasised that private sector participation should be stepped up to improve healthcare in India. Private players are currently concentrated in the metro cities .Jaitley noted that while healthcare facilities in India's country-side were largely lagging, the situation in the national Capital was no better. “When Delhi was under Central rule, I announced a budget of close to 70 dialysis machines in the government-run set-ups. While this was also a low allocation, it was seen as a big deal because even that much was not available earlier,” he said.

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