In a clever play of words, Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac, in his State Budget for 2019-20, has tried hard to disguise the fact that he does not have anything new to offer – either as schemes or human resource or an enhanced allocation -- for the State’s public health sector.
Dr. Isaac allocated ₹1,406 crore for the health sector, which is much lesser than the allocations in previous years.
He, however, said that by taking into account the ₹600 crore expected from the National Health Mission, the ₹800-1,000 crore being set aside for the health insurance scheme and the ₹1,000 crore expected from KIIFB towards hospitals for infrastructure building, the health sector gets a total allocation of nearly ₹4,000 crore.
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The highlight of this year’s budget is indeed the announcement of the new comprehensive health insurance scheme merging RSBY and Karunya and all other health protection schemes, with an enhanced cover of ₹5 lakh. However, this integration is something that he has been consistently repeating in every budget since 2016. He also fails to mention totally that this enhanced cover of ₹5 lakh is possible because of the merger of State schemes and Karunya with Centre’s Ayushman Bharat Prime Minister’s Jan Arogya Yojana
The government will cover the 42 lakh families it is currently covering under the RSBY (which ends in April) under the new insurance scheme also. While the health cover of up to ₹1 lakh will be paid by the insurance companies, all treatment expenses over that, up to ₹5 lakh will be paid by the government directly in a trust mode. The scheme will commence in May this year
Dr. Isaac announced that this insurance cum assurance scheme will be open to the general public, who are not covered by the RSBY, ESI or the State Employees’ Health Insurance Scheme, provided they are willing to pay the premium. However, it is not clear whether this section of the population becomes eligible for a cover of ₹1 lakh or ₹5 lakh.
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The rest of the announcements –regarding the upgrading of primary health centres into family health centres, augmenting secondary and tertiary care by equipping hospitals with specialities including Oncology, cardiology and dialysis facilities – are all carryovers from the previous budgets.