"I am extremely happy and proud that our country has launched the world's largest scheme Ayushmaan Bharat for taking care of the population. (Atleast) 40-60 per cent of the population will be taken care of under the scheme. This is for people who need treatment but are unable to access it," said, Dr. Azad Moopen, Founder Chairman and Managing Director Aster DM Healthcare, while addressing a keynote session at a BW Hospital and Summit and Awards.
He further said, “In order to make this successful, the governments at the state and centre have to come together. The sharing of the cost (s) between the Centre and the state (govt) is 60% and 40% respectively, which is an important share for running such schemes. It is also very important to make the private sector a part of this (scheme). And with 15,000 hospitals empanelled, nearly 18 lakh beneficiaries have been treated and around 2 crore beneficiary e-cards have been issued.”
However, he maintained that there are some challenges for its implementation as the package rates are not acceptable and are not to a level where the private sector is actually taking it up and that is a major deterrent for the scheme.
" (In) many of the states, the rates are not up to the mark. They may have the facility to provide the packages in some of the hospitals (and) in some of the cities. But most of the hospitals do not have the infrastructure or people to do it which is a very important deterrent for the scheme to take up. Even if you accept the package and the hospitals in tier 2 and tier 3 cities do that, they don’t have the equipment to provide the service.," Moopen further added.
"Lack of ownership by certain states is another factor and public awareness of the benefits of this scheme is not complete. So the ideal suggestion for the improvement of this scheme is to establish a statutory body to implement the scheme. Now Niti Aayog is doing that. Another factor is funding. Initially, it was introduced for Rs. 2,000 crore. Now I have been told that it will be about Rs. 6,000 crore from the centre and Rs. 4,000 crore from the state. So Rs. 10,000 crore for funding 10 crores of families. At least 10 crore families will be benefitted out of it on a yearly basis. For those who don’t have access to healthcare facilities can avail of a healthcare insurance cover of up to Rs five lakh," concluded Moopen.
