Expand Scope of NHPS

Modicare can provide impetus to home healthcare and people’s preference to more personalised care

- Anand Garg

The central Government’s announcement of National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), now popularly known as Modicare, has received unprecedented attention from various agencies, healthcare industry and the public since its announcement in the budget. Thanks to above, the contours ofthe scheme are beginning to emerge and its scope getting clarified. The NHPS envisages to provide insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh to 100 million families and 500 million individuals from the financially disadvantaged segments of the society for secondary and tertiary care. Additionally, the Government also proposes to set up 1,50,000 health and wellness centres to provide treatment for non-communicable diseases and disburse primary care to young mothers and children, besides free supply of medicines and diagnostics are also a part of the plan.

Many healthcare experts and other stakeholders may think that the current scope of NHPS appears to be truly reactive in terms of providing insurance cover to enable individuals avail the services of a hospital for secondary and tertiary care – hospitalisation for chronic illness and treatment for terminal illness, respectively. For a country with population of 1.3 billion people having average per capita healthcare expenditure of $267, this scope does not appear to be robust enough.