Health Insurance is a must thing in today’s high paced lifestyle. Equality is the key to evenly distribute or implement goods and services. Insurance doesn’t stand an exception for this. Possessing composite structure, Insurance industry has been receiving disfavors across the section of the society. However, proper propaganda, awareness campaigns, mode of communication etc. have made the things favorable for this industry; a huge below poverty line (BPL) segment is still lagging behind in health insurance race though. Peeping through this genuine lack from BPL Segment, the Centre’s Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) is being restructured to include 100 million below poverty line people and increase cover for hospitalization and health expenses from the Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 1 lakh.
In spite of this, cashless hospitalization has also been made more flexible to allow states sharing the cost with Union Government, to opt for top-up benefits for the people covered as well as include those above the poverty line. The mentioned coverage will be free for BPL families. It will hold low premium for the said middle class strata and full premium for those who are able to pay.
Under this, the beneficiaries pay a token of Rs. 30 for registration and are issued a Biometric Smart Card that entitles them to inpatient care up to Rs. 30000 per family per year at empaneled hospitals. This revamped RSBY will also subsume four central health plan benefitting 23 million families comprising 82 million people. Outpatient and inpatient care, tertiary care and prescription drugs to employees, pensioners and their families are some of the covers offered by this scheme. Central government has brought in and revamped these schemes for civilian employees and pensioners, Retired Employees Liberalized Health Scheme of the railway health service, Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme for retired armed forces personnel and Employees’ State Insurance Scheme (ESI) for workers and their families in the organized sector with an annual income of Rs 1.8 lakh or less.
State can also extend the services to people above poverty line and provide secondary and tertiary benefits with a top-up of the scheme. Secondary healthcare involves patients being referred to specialists in better hospitals. Tertiary care is consultative care usually provided to a patient on reference from primary or secondary medical centers for special investigation and treatment. Surprisingly, this scheme will be holding a strong IT platform for facilitating operations. A large database is being created that would include facilities at every hospital, disease profile and other details of each stakeholder. Free medical check-ups once every three years for middle aged and elderly at risk of heart diseases and diabetes will also be provided under the revamped RSBY.