The war of words over the implementation of Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY in Delhi hospitals took a fresh turn with the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan dubbing Delhi government's mohalla clinics “utter flop”. The controversy over Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY began after Harsh Vardhan wrote a letter to chief ministers of four states – Delhi, West Bengal, Odisha, and Telangana – urging them to join the Centre's flagship health insurance scheme, launched last year by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal responded by stating in his letter that the state government already had a “ten times bigger scheme” running and that merging it with the Centre's scheme would rob several citizens of the benefits. The state's scheme benefitted two crore citizens, while the PMJAY would benefit only less than 10 per cent of the population, Kejriwal argued in his letter. Kejriwal further said under the state government's health scheme, people could get treatment for upto Rs 30 lakh.
However, in his response to the Delhi CM, Harsh Vardhan stated that this claim was “laughable”, and that people in Delhi were still having to pay for their treatment.
He also stated in the letter that the Centre's scheme targets 15 per cent of the population in Delhi, and contrary to Kejriwal's claims, those earning less than Rs 10,000 per month in 2011 (according to SECC data) would be eligible to get benefits under the scheme.
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Harsh Vardhan also stated the Delhi government's proposed Universal Health Coverage Scheme, announced a year ago, was still to be implemented, and had “no special focus” on poor and vulnerable families and could possibly end up benefitting “richer families”.
“Since you are anyway providing OPD cover through your proposed scheme, linking it with PMJAY for in-patient cover will be a boon for the poor and vulnerable population of Delhi as they will now get access to private hospitals across the country. You can even expand PMJAY to cover more beneficiaries as has been done by other states,” the Union health minister wrote in his response.
The war over joining the Centre's scheme needs to be seen in the context of the upcoming assembly elections in Delhi next year. Over the past year, the Delhi government has made clear its intention to stay away from the Centre's scheme. Before the 2019 polls, officials of the National Health Authority had told THE WEEK that they would not pursue the states that had refused to join the scheme. However, less than a week after taking charge as Union health minister, Harsh Vardhan has revived attempts to bring the four states under the PMJAY umbrella.
