NEW DELHI, Feb 4:

Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar has said, the newly announced mega healthcare scheme is a game changer and revenue from the 1 per cent additional cess would be enough to meet the funding needs. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget for 2018-19 announced the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) announced to provide health insurance cover 5 lakh rupees to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families.

Talking to PTI, Mr Kumar regretted that a completely baseless and false propaganda is being spread by the opposition leaders against the ambitious scheme of the Modi government. On funding of the scheme envisaging to cover about 50 crore people, the Niti Aayog vice-chairman said the allocation for the health sector has been raised by 6,000 crore rupees.
Moreover, there is an existing facility of 2,000 crore rupees for the ongoing Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) scheme. 

The government has provided further financial space to the health ministry by establishing an alternate mechanism Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) for funding capex needs of the health education project. 

And in addition, the one per cent extra education and health cess proposed by Mr Jaitley in the budget will annually yield 11,000 crore rupees. All these combined would be more than adequate to meet the financing needs of welfare programme.

Mr Kumar said, the Centre and the state governments will only have to bear the insurance premium which was likely to be very moderate. 

He said, like all central schemes it will have 60-40 ratio. Those states which want to join the scheme will contribute 40 per cent. North East states will pay 10 per cent.
On the infrastructure for health services providers, Mr Kumar said, the scheme will encourage private sector enterprises that will come up rapidly.

 

 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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