Cashless health plan for Punjab staff goes

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 22

The Punjab Government has decided not to continue the Government Employees and Pensioners’ Health Insurance Scheme (PGEPHIS) from the next year. The scheme started earlier this year will come to end on December 31.

The Oriental Insurance Corporation, which was given the contract under the scheme, suffered a loss of around Rs 165 crore in one year.

Principal Secretary Health Vini Mahajan confirmed the scheme would end next week. She said the scheme was started for employees and pensioners, but it was not found much useful for them, so the government decided not to extend it.

There was a lengthy discussion on the issue during a Cabinet meeting on December 5 and it was overwhelmingly opposed on the pretext that employees and pensioners were facing difficulty at the hands of insurance company while they were being robbed by private hospitals.

The Cabinet asked Health & Family Welfare Minister Surjit Kumar Jyani to hold a meeting with scheme beneficiaries and take a call. The Tribune had highlighted in July how the Oriental Insurance Corporation was suffering huge losses and had conveyed to the Health Department that it could not continue the scheme any further. The company had also started refusing enrolment of new beneficiaries.

Hospitals generated claims of around Rs 214 crore in a year. The insurance firm, which got the contract under the scheme for Rs 56 crore annually, has already paid claims worth Rs 135 crore. Around 61,000 employees and pensioners availed themselves of cashless treatment.