November 29, 2018
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday, as many as 3 lakh poor people have benefited from Ayushman Bharat health scheme in the last one-and-a-half months.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September launched the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana which aims to provide coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family annually, benefiting more than 10.74 crore poor families for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation through a network of empanelled health care providers.
Around 66 per cent of the total beneficiaries have availed treatment in private hospitals under the Ayushman Bharat scheme with a majority of them being recorded in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chattishgarh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh respectively, an official said.
Dinesh Arora, deputy chief executive of the National Health Agency (NHA), the apex body implementing the scheme, said till November 26, of the total 3,65,394 beneficiaries who were admitted to hospitals for undergoing various surgeries and procedures, 204,000 have been treated in private hospitals.
Over 10,000 hospitals have been empanelled for the scheme, and 33 states and Union Territories have signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with the Centre for implementing the programme.