Health plan all-in, SAD lying: Sidhu

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 22

Terming the allegations levelled on government’s Sarbat Sehat Bima Yojna as baseless, Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said the government had covered the 76 per cent population under the Ayushman Bharat Sarbat Sehat Bima Yojna to facilitate 1,396 health packages, which makes Punjab one of the leading states in terms of population covered under this scheme.

In a statement, he said it was decided to reserve only 124 treatment services in government health institutes out of 1,396 health packages. Moreover, in case of an emergency, the government hospital would be allowed to refer the patient to an empanelled private hospital.

In case the treatment is not available with the government hospital within the district, the patient can be referred to any empanelled private hospital, he claimed.

Sidhu said that it seemed that the SAD was advocating expensive treatment of primary and secondary level available in private hospitals and wanted to end the autonomy of government hospitals.

He said that this was the path taken by most of other states that had their successful health insurance programmes. “For instance, in Haryana around 146 healthcare procedures are reserved, in Tamil Nadu 681, Maharashtra 460, Madhya Pradesh 472, Kerala 235, Gujarat 200 and in Karnataka 443 procedures are reserved in the government hospitals,” he added.