Modicare - A SWOT Analysis

The National Health Protection Scheme brings the Government to the forefront and positions it in the leadership role

- Anand Garg

The National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) aka Modicare announced by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in this year’s budget is a good initiative and is a welcome move. Under this plan, christened as ‘Ayushman Bharat’, the central Government will cover 100 million poor families and 500 million people, providing each family an insurance cover of up to Rs 5 lakh per year for secondary and tertiary care or for hospitalisation. The scheme is estimated to cost the Government exchequer about Rs 10, 000 crore annually. 

In India, the secondary and tertiary care penetration is abysmally low with per capita expenditure on healthcare at Rs 13,000 compared with China at Rs 37,000, not to mention the USA at Rs 5, 75, 250 and the UK at Rs 2, 10, 275 respectively; an initiative of this kind is the need of the hour. The central Government’s intent to include poor people from rural, peri- urban and urban areas in the healthcare eco-system is a step in the right direction. In this context, it must be acknowledged that the Government has not only been initiating long-term sustainable systemic reforms across sectors but has also been undertaking initiatives to ensure service delivery to its citizens, particularly in care, education and infrastructure areas.

Successful implementation of any such scheme is the hallmark of availability of adequate financial resources, infrastructure and skilled manpower besides business friendly regulatory environment. So, also is the deployment of technology, particularly in the 21st century where Artificial Intelligence (AI), M2M, Internet of Things (IOT) and Big Data are simplifying things and playing an enabler’s role in developing solutions to find answers to day-to-day problems, thereby making a huge impact in people’s lives and businesses alike.