'Modicare' to introduce free medicine, health insurance for citizens

In a major health sector reform, the government will ensure that every resident in India has access to affordable healthcare with provisions of free essential medicines while bringing over a dozen diseases including cancer and heart ailments under the ambit of the proposed National Health Assurance Mission.

Updated on: Nov 5, 2014, 24:13:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a major health sector reform, the government will ensure that every resident in India has access to affordable healthcare with provisions of free essential medicines while bringing over a dozen diseases including cancer and heart ailments under the ambit of the proposed National Health Assurance Mission.

The reform to be packed under the mission will subsume the UPA government's National Health Mission and will also create infrastructure to provide generic variants of 348 essential medicines and fitness related diagnostic facilities across India.

To be launched from the next financial year, the mission will also unveil the country's first national health assurance cover for all at affordable rates similar to Obama healthcare introduced in the United States, senior government sources told HT.

"The government will chip in to pay insurance premium for the poor. Others will have to buy an insurance cover to get benefits under the Mission but the premium would be less than the existing health insurance rates," a health ministry official said, adding the poor are likely to be identified on basis of their annual household income.

The mission aims to reduce out of pocket health expenditure for people, which as per national sample survey office survey had almost doubled in 2012 as compared to 2000.

It also aims at optimum use of public health infrastructure created under the erstwhile National Rural Health Mission. NSSO data shows that the use of government's inefficient health system was falling even in rural areas with people opting for private medical facilities despite government expenditure on public health increasing to about 4% of the GDP.

A senior official said the mission would move into PPP mode to provide affordable healthcare with private players allowed to utilise certain government created infrastructure.

The reform will take the successful insurance-based models in states like Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu to the national scale. These models cover health cost in the empanelled private hospitals and in those where the patients are referred by a government hospital and provide for free generic medicines in all government hospitals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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