State fails to implement health insurance scheme for poor

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, January 16

Even after passing of over five years, the Jammu and Kashmir Government has failed to successfully implement the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) – a health insurance scheme for the underprivileged.

The state government started the centrally sponsored scheme as a pilot project for Srinagar and Jammu cities in 2011. After 35,490 out of the 66,004 Below Poverty Line (BPL) families in the twin cities enrolled to avail the benefits of the scheme, only 218 were provided the insurance benefits.

The state government later in 2013 extended the scheme to 10 other districts, five each in Kashmir and Jammu divisions, but it received a major stumbling block due to the unavailability of data of the BPL families in the state.

The Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department, which keeps the records of BPL families, failed to provide the data in a proper format after reminders from the Health Department. “Since then the Food Department has been delaying it, rendering the scheme into a failure,” a senior official associated with the scheme told The Tribune.

The scheme was launched by the Central Government in 2008 and after three years extended it to Jammu and Kashmir. The beneficiaries under the RSBY are entitled to hospitalisation coverage up to Rs 30,000 per annum on a family floater basis, for most of the diseases that require hospitalisation in the empanelled hospitals in the state. The government had empanelled nine hospitals in Jammu and four government hospitals in Srinagar for health check-ups with insurance cover.

The beneficiaries need to pay only Rs 30 as registration fee for a year while the Central and state government pays the premium as per their sharing ratio of 90:10 respectively to the insurer selected by the state government on the basis of a competitive bidding.

The health officials said the government took no initiative to create awareness about the scheme. Besides, the lack of administrative and political will added to the failure of the scheme.

After public criticism for failing to implement the scheme, the state government in early 2016 started the process to implement it in whole of the state.

“The tender document was sent to the Finance Department in April last for approval, but as of now it has not been approved,” a health official said. However, Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu last week promised that the government would provide 10 per cent state share to run the scheme in the state.

In J&K, where conflict has wreaked havoc on the health of the people and their standard of living, such schemes will have many takers. Nearly 24.21 lakh people are living under the BPL category which includes 22 lakh in rural areas and 7.96 per cent residing in urban areas of the state.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Health Asae Naqash said she would look into it.