The mega healthcare plan announced in the Budget to provide 10-crore poor families with insurance cover against hospitalisation will cost up to Rs 12,000 crore annually and is likely to be launched on August 15 or October 2, officials said today.
The 'National Health Protection Scheme', dubbed as 'Modicare' and the world's largest government healthcare programme, will be funded with 60 per cent contribution coming from the Central government and the remaining from the states, said NITI Aayog advisor Alok Kumar.
Premium for availing health insurance cover of up to Rs 5 lakh is expected to be around Rs 1,000-1,200 annually for every household, which will be borne by the Centre and the states, he said.
In his Budget for 2018-19, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had provided an initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crore for the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPC) that aims to provide medical cover of up to Rs 5 lakh to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families, constituting 40 per cent of India's total population.
Today, Jaitley promised more funds depending on the rollout requirement.
According to Vinod Kumar Paul, Niti Aayog member and architect of the scheme, the 1 per cent additional education and health cess would be sufficient to meet the cost of the scheme.
All the poor people identified by the the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 will be eligible for the scheme, Kumar said, adding that it will be linked to Aadhar but will not be a mandatory condition for availing the benefit. The scheme, the finance minister said, will be cashless and not a reimbursement scheme and promised more funds if required depending on the rollout later next financial year.
"It takes care of hospitalisation, the secondary and tertiary care. Obviously, it will involve various state hospitals and select private hospitals. It can be on trust model, it can be on insurance model. It's not on reimbursement model because too many complaints come on the reimbursement model," the minister said here.