Over 54 million beneficiaries across the country have availed of free hospitalisation benefits worth Rs 66,400 crore so far after Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) was rolled out in September 2018.
PMJAY offers Rs 5,00,000-a-year free health cover to 107 million poor households in the country, roughly covering the bottom 40% population of the country.
In terms of the number of beneficiaries, Tamil Nadu tops all states with authorised hospital admissions of 9 million so far, followed, by Rajasthan (5.74 million), Karnataka (5.52 million) and Kerala (5.19 million).
The Centre launched the scheme on September 23, 2018, to alleviate the suffering of people due to the rising cost of healthcare. According to an estimate about 62% of healthcare costs are borne out of pocket pushing millions of Indians into poverty every year.
Under PMJAY, a total of 1,949 procedures are available for beneficiaries to get cashless treatment which includes all the costs related to treatment, medicines, supplies, diagnostic services, physician’s fees, room charges, surgeon charges, OT & ICU charges, etc.
The top specialty care treatments availed by beneficiaries to date are general medicine, infectious diseases, general surgery, medical oncology (cancer treatment) and ophthalmology.
The PM-JAY empanelled hospital network consists of 27,510 hospitals (including 12,000 private hospitals or 44%) across the country. During the year 2022-23, approximately 56% of the total admissions (by amount) have been authorised in private hospitals while 44% of the admissions have been authorised in public hospitals.
AB PM-JAY is being implemented in 33 States and Union Territories (UTs) except for Delhi, Odisha, and West Bengal. To date, 241.2 million beneficiaries have been verified and issued Ayushman Cards for availing of free treatment under the scheme.
In due course, the Centre may widen the coverage of PMJAY to middle-class families to protect them from rising health-related expenditure shocks.
