Abandon Ayushman Bharat

The recent announcement regarding the launch of the Ayushman Bharat–Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) has raised expectations that the scheme will somehow address the extremely urgent needs regarding healthcare in the country. Expectations have also been raised because of the labelling of the scheme as the “largest health protection scheme in the world” and the promise that beneficiaries will receive ₹ 5 lakh as cost of hospitalisation.

The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) wishes to point out that the mere assertion that the AB-PMJAY is the largest health protection scheme in the world, does not make it so, and is entirely misleading. The government’s own National Health Mission (NHM) has an outlay of around ₹ 35,000 crore, many times more than the ₹ 2,000 crore allocated for the scheme in the 2018–19 budget.