ModiCare: Universal health care in India to be a reality?
Recently, ‘the Lancet’, a leading British medical journal proclaimed Modi to be the 1st Indian PM to have focussed on universal health care. The news is referring to ‘ A yushman Bharat ’ - Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana(PMJAY), a health insurance scheme first proposed in the 2018 budget and introduced again in the independence day speech earlier this year. The scheme aims to provide Rs 5 lakh cover to 50 crore poor people as identified by the Socio-Economic Caste Census(SECC) data. The scheme is touted to be the world’s largest state sponsored welfare scheme. It has also received praise from the WHO. What remains to be seen is how the ambitious targets and goals set by the scheme would actually be implemented at the ground level considering the abysmal health facilities in the rural parts of the country. It would also be interesting to see how up-market private hospitals would end up participating in the scheme considering the scheme’s diverging interests from profit-driven ...