Policy Watch: Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission's struggles with implementation
The tech stack to enable the world's largest health insurance scheme was never going to be easy to build.
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Billed as the world’s largest health insurance scheme when it was introduced in February 2018, the Indian government’s Ayushman Bharat programme was never going to be easy to implement. Why should a state that is already running a health insurance scheme adopt the Centre’s bells-and-whistles version?
For most states, the answer was simple: the scheme gives states flexibility on how to execute and merge state and Centre programs. Rajasthan wasn’t keen, for example, because its Bhamashah Yojana, in effect since 2014, offered a coverage of Rs 3.3 lakh across over 1,400 medical procedures at the time, and covered most of the state’s poor. But favourable terms meant the state signed an MoU with the Centre thanks to favourable terms. Opposition-run Tamil Nadu and West Bengal also negotiated a merger of their own scheme with the central one.
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