Aarogyasri, AB PMJAY to aid poor families in Telangana

Dovetailing of both schemes has the potential to directly benefit anywhere between 25L and 30L additional families

Hyderabad: The converged scheme of the State government-run Aarogyasri Health Insurance Scheme and Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) is expected to pave the way for wider health insurance coverage to poor and vulnerable people in Telangana, who can now access quality healthcare services in private and government hospitals.

The dovetailing of both the health insurance schemes has the potential to directly benefit anywhere between 25 lakh and 30 lakh additional families in Telangana, who now will have an insurance coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh under AB-PMJAY. All the existing State-run insurance schemes in Telangana along with AB-PMJAY combined could provide insurance coverage to over 1 crore households.

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Launched in September 2018 by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, the AB-PMJAY is specifically aimed at extending health insurance coverage of Rs 5 lakh to the poorest of the poor in the society. The roll-out is aimed at covering the bottom 40 per cent of the poor and vulnerable population and provide healthcare coverage to at least 10.74 crore households throughout India.

In the coming months, senior health officials said, the convergence of both the State and Centrally sponsored health insurance schemes has the potential to cover more than 1 crore households in Telangana.

The Aarogyasri health insurance scheme already covers nearly 80 lakh families in Telangana. The insurance coverage to each family varies between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 13 lakh and in some specialised therapies there is no limit for insurance coverage. The State government through Aarogyasri also covers high-end procedures like kidney and liver transplant surgeries for needy patients.

The annual outlay of expenditure for Ayushman Bharat in Telangana is expected to be anywhere between Rs 250 crore and Rs 300 crore with a coverage of 25 lakh to 30 lakh households. The annual expenditure incurred by the State government to implement Aarogyasri health insurance scheme in the State is between Rs 790 crore and Rs 800 crore.

Apart from providing health insurance to 80 lakh families through Aarogyasri, the State government also provides separate health insurance schemes like ESI, Employees and Journalists Health Scheme (EHS/JHS) and exclusive insurance cover to Singareni employees, which amounts to nearly 20 lakh families.

The beneficiaries for AB-PMJAY, which will be identified by the State government in the coming days, will be based on the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) data in both urban and rural areas.

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