Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Less than half the money allocated for the Centre’s flagship health scheme Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana has been utilised in 2020-21, as health services across the country suffered due to pandemic and lockdown, government data shows.
As per the expenditure profile document of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Rs 6,400 crore was allocated for the scheme before being revised to only Rs 3,100 crore as hospitalisation rates drastically fell March onwards.
For the coming fiscal too, the government has estimated Rs 6,400 crore for the programme.
Launched in September 2018, PMJAY provides for free secondary and tertiary hospitalisation of up to Rs 5 lakh for nearly 10 crore families across the country and covers 1573 procedures including 23 specialties.
Booster Dose
With record healthcare expenditure and allocations focussing on mitigating the impact of Covid-19, it s a shot in the arm for the sector
Illustration by Raj Verma
The highest-ever healthcare allocation in a budget will provide the much-needed boost to the ailing economy, and pave the way for a robust, holistic public healthcare infrastructure to tackle future pandemics, according to industry experts.
The Budget outlay for Health and Wellbeing for 2021/22 came in at a record Rs 2,23,846 crore, a 137 per cent increase over this year s Budget estimate of Rs 94,452 crore. It is about 1.6 per cent of India s projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at Rs 134.4 lakh crore for 2020/21. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who earmarked Rs 35,000 crore for Coronavirus vaccination as a short-term overall reset to correct the ailing economy, also announced a two-pronged strategy after listening to experts in the sector.
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Principal Secy to LG reviews progress of various departments, digitisation initiatives
Principal Secy to LG reviews progress of various departments, digitisation initiatives
Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 5: Principal Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor, Nitishwar Kumar today conducted a meeting to assess the progress being made on the implementation of directions of Lieutenant Governor’s review meetings.
The meeting was a follow-up of similar meetings held during the last fifteen days.
Administrative Secretaries and representatives from various departments participated in the meeting and shared the status of progress made so far by their respective departments.
Among various issues discussed, the Principal Secretary took stock of the registration process under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) and called for registration of all the potential beneficiaries by the next couple of months.
Abhay (47) and Pooja singh (38) live in Calcutta. Their son Archit (13) is in seventh grade. Abhay is a regional sales manager with a company involved in the farm sector, while Pooja is a home-maker. Abhay feels a middle class family needs three basic things - health, house and child’s education. He hopes the government will focus on these in the budget. Pooja hopes the budget will encourage families to buy a reasonable preventive health insurance by increasing the limit of section 80D.
As a family with a substantial home loan and a school-going kid, they would want the deduction limit for tuition fees to be put under a separate section and not be clubbed under 80C. On deduction on home loan interest, Abhay feels that the limit should be increased to Rs 4 lakh considering the amount of interest he pays on his home loan.