The curious case of Ayushman Bharat scheme’s contribution to rich-poor divide during Covid-19
An RTI reply from National Health Authority (NHA) of the government of India has pointed out that in India’s poorest state Bihar, just 19 people benefited from Ayushman Bharat scheme for Covid related treatment. In comparison, for states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, the beneficiary count was above one and half lakh.
The available data thus shows a sharp divide in the number of beneficiaries of one of the most ambitious government schemes and that too for a crisis like Covid. Given the poor healthcare infrastructure of low income states like Bihar, it is intuitive to think that people would have preferred treatment in better private run hospitals, putting an even larger burden on their pockets.
Uttar Pradesh which ranks just above Bihar in terms of per capita GDP, also witnessed merely 875 Covid treatments under the scheme. For Jharkhand, which is ranked third from the last in the list of per capita GDP of states after Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the number stood at 1419. It is even more interesting that not a single person from Punjab, Gujarat and Daman benefited from the scheme in terms of Covid treatment. It might be noted that Punjab and Gujarat have one of the highest Covid mortality rates in the country.
The Ayushman Bharat scheme, launched in 2018 is aimed at helping roughly 50 crore Indians with affordable and quality healthcare by providing support of Rs 5 lakh per eligible family every year. In response to the RTI filed by India Today, the authority did not clearly state the number of beneficiaries for the two waves separately. The data on Covid testing facility was also sought in the application and was provided with. Again, in Bihar just 105 people got tested under the facility while for Tamilnadu the count was nearly 16 lakhs.
