He, however, said all beneficiaries presently under the RSBY scheme would be included in the national scheme even if the State government had to remit the insurance premium. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s announcement on Thursday about the launch of NHPS, the ‘world’s largest healthcare programme’, on the eve of the State Budget, certainly threw a spanner in the works for the State government. In the 2016-17 Budget, Dr. Isaac had said that the State intended to roll out an integrated comprehensive health assurance programme to provide affordable treatment for specialty and super-specialty care. On Friday, Dr. Isaac effectively said that till the full details of the proposed NHPS was unveiled, the State would have to put on hold the comprehensive health coverage package that it intended to launch now. The apprehension about 20 lakh families getting excluded from the NHPS was flagged as the eligibility of the 10 crore poor families proposed to be covered under the NHPS would be decided by the socio-economic census of the Planning Commission.

Source: The Hindu February 02, 2018 18:22 UTC