Residents demand restoration of HimCare Scheme in hospitals

The closure of HimCare, a cashless medical treatment scheme, has affected commoners, who are unable to have access to free medical treatment at private hospitals.

In 2019, the BJP government had launched the HimCare scheme in the state to provide cashless treatment to the people who were left out by Ayushman Bharat. The HimCare scheme has been benefitting lakhs of the people as private hospitals were also covered under it to provide cashless health treatment up to Rs 5 lakh a year.

However, the cashless HIM CARE scheme is still available at government hospitals where the situation is too bad; most of them are overcrowded, and people have to stand in long queues for even simple surgeries. In case of the CT scans, MRIs, ultrasound scanning and ordinary medical tests, one has to wait for months. In the present scenario, the most serious cases are either referred to PGI-Chandigarh or other health institutions.

Recently, an accident victim, who had suffered serious head injuries, was referred to Tanda Medical College in the neuron surgery department as he had to be immediately operated. However, the neuron surgeon was not available, and the patient was asked to refer to PGI-Chandigarh. Being in a critical condition, his relatives took him to a private nursing home, where the cost of surgery was over Rs 2 two lakh. The patient, coming from an underprivileged background, could not afford to meet the high cost of surgery. Meanwhile, some people came to his rescue and collected, which saved his life.

HimCare was supposed to benefit patients in such cases. Ever since the scheme was scrapped in the private hospitals, many people have lost their lives in the absence of adequate medical facilities.

Several patients, while talking to The Tribune outside Tanda Medical College, said instead of scrapping the HimCare scheme in the private hospitals, the government should have plugged loopholes. The government should have made appropriate arrangements in government hospitals to meet the eventualities, they added.

A senior official of the Health Department said Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had constituted a high-level committee six months ago in this regard, and its report was still awaited. As soon as the government received the report, a new health scheme would be notified, he added.