Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 23
The ruling BJP is planning a massive nationwide outreach with the beneficiaries of the government’s flagship Ayushman Bharat scheme this Diwali to find out how the plan is doing on the ground.
In the first-of-its-kind effort by any ruling dispensation’s organisation to see if a major government scheme of delivering, MPs of the BJP will meet beneficiaries in their respective constituencies and ask them first hand how their experience of the plan was.
Just some questions the MPs have been told to ask the beneficiaries of Ayushman Bharat scheme are – did you have to pay money for diagnosis, treatment or medicines; was the treatment given on time; did you get treatment at a private or a public hospital; how was the overall quality of service of the hospital; how has Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana changed your financial status?”
The outreach will inform policy changes to the scheme, described by the WHO as the world’s largest financial health protection scheme.
Under PMJAY, 10 crore poor and vulnerable families identified as such by the socio-economic caste census of the Rural Development Ministry are entitled to free hospitalisation private and government hospitals for treatments that cost up to Rs five lakh every year. Last week the scheme, launched in September 2018, crossed the milestone of reaching 50 lakh beneficiaries. The Ayushman Bharat Mission has been maintaining real time data on the working of the plan, which the BJP seeks to project and build as a major social scheme in times to come.
“For this to happen we need to know how the scheme is doing on the ground. We need to test our own claims against ground realities. That is the objective. The party sees the scheme as a game-changer but it needs to know of that game changing potential is translating into realities. We will meet the beneficiaries and ask them many questions about the scheme including whether they will as a Diwali gift volunteer to help other poor families get e cards necessary to access services under the scheme,” a BJP member said.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/362dcLW
via Today’s News Headlines
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