Ayushman Bharat world's best health insurance scheme: Jitendra Singh

Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Friday asserted that the Centre's Ayushman Bharat Scheme is so far the world's best health insurance scheme and credit goes to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for conceptualising it.

"This is possibly the only health insurance scheme in the world which offers the option of seeking insurance cover even for a pre-existing disease, like for example, if today a person is detected having cancer, he can thereafter go and get himself insured to receive the financial support for treatment," said Singh.

Addressing the Economic Times Doctor's Day Conclave on the eve of Doctor's Day here today, Dr Jitendra Singh said, by bringing in Ayushman Bharat, India has moved from a sectoral and segmented approach of health service delivery to a comprehensive need-based healthcare service.

The Minister said, this is the unique scheme, where one can register for pre-existing diseases also. He informed that Jammu and Kashmir was the first UT to have universal coverage of the health scheme irrespective of the economic criteria, stated a government release.

The Minister informed that Ayushman Bharat Yojna provides free treatment of upto five lakh rupees in the best of hospitals to eligible beneficiaries. Responding to queries about some irregularities in the implementation of the scheme, he said, we are at the initial stages of implementation and the government is open to make suitable changes as required in the scheme in due course. The Minister also emphasized that integrity is a big factor in a vast heterogeneous country like India and slowly but surely this health insurance scheme will become a model for the world to emulate.

Jitendra Singh said the Pandemic has taught us the virtues of holistic healthcare and even after the pandemic has passed, it will be in the interest of mankind to institutionalize integrated medicinal approach for adequate treatment and prevention of various diseases. The Minister said that during the COVID even the West started looking up to India in search of immunity building techniques drawn from Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Unani, Yoga, Naturopathy and other oriental alternatives. He said, however, even after the COVID phase passes out, an optimum integration and synergism of different streams of medical management are the key to successful management of various diseases and disorders which may not be otherwise completely amenable to treatment by any single stream of medicine or the treatment given in silos.

He informed that when COVID-19 hit us, India notified the telemedicine practice guidelines in March 2020, and we did the same for AYUSH in April 2020. He said, India could immediately notify these guidelines as our groundwork was done and we were ready. The Minister said, "we must work together to ensure 'Digital Health for All', which is a pre-condition to achieve 'Health for All'."

Dr Jitendra Singh said, it was the far-sightedness of Prime Minister Modi that soon after coming to power in 2014, he shared the powerful vision of 'Digital India' much before COVID-19 hit the world.

Singh concluded that it was Prime Minister Modi again who gave a call for Startup India and Standup India from the ramparts of the Red Fort in 2015, when there were only 350 odd startups operating in India and now the country ranks 3rd in terms of Startups in the world, with around one lakh startups and 100 plus Unicorns and many of them are heath and biotech startups.