Insurance schemes should not replace need for better infrastructure, reliable care: Expert

MUMBAI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley announced yet another

health scheme

in the

Union Budget

on Monday. He said that catastrophic health events are the single most important cause of unforeseen out-of-pocket expenditure, which pushes lakhs of households below the poverty line every year.

He said that serious illness of family members cause severe stress on the financial circumstances of poor and economically weak families, shaking the foundation of their economic security.

In order to help such families, the government will launch a new health protection scheme which will provide health cover up to Rs one lakh per family. For senior citizens of age 60 years and above belonging to this category, an additional top-up package up to Rs 30,000 will be provided.

“Any form of social insurance cover in India is welcome and desperately needed. But there is a caveat. The government cannot ignore the day-to-day infrastructure needed to deliver care. Mere insurance schemes cannot compensate the need to improve facilities and accessibility,” said gastrointestinal surgeon Dr Sanjay Nagral, also a patient rights activist.

He added that even in mega cities like Mumbai, government and peripheral corporation hospitals are not able to deliver good reliable care. “If a poor needs a kidney or liver transplant but cannot avail of it in a public hospital, what is the point of having an insurance cover of one lakh?” Nagral questioned.

Many also felt that the devil in the insurance scheme could lie in the details. “Some of the crucial details are missing. We don’t know whether it is a contributory or non-contributory scheme,” said Abhay Shukla, national convenor of Jan Swasthya Abhyan. He also said the announcement was most likely a populist one. “We already have schemes such as Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY), which have been failures at the state-level. “In Maharashtra, the RSBY has been shut down since the past three years but there has been no evaluation to see why it did not work. By bringing in more national schemes without understanding why the previous ones, we could only be repeating past mistakes,” said Shukla. Check out the Valentine Day 2025 , along with the Valentine’s Day Wishes and Messages.