The highly ambitious public health insurance scheme is expected to create 1 lakh long-term jobs. The government’s Ayushman Bharat program aims to provide health insurance coverage to over 10 crore Indian families.
The chief executive officer (CEO) of the program, Indu Bhushan said that the health insurance scheme will create 1 lakh long-term skilled and semi-skilled jobs. Most of these jobs will be created by the expansion of private hospitals to support the health insurance program. The program aims to provide Rs 5 lakh worth health cover to 10 crore poor families in the country.
Indu Bhushan said, “Based on our analysis, AB-NHPM is likely to directly create more than 100,000 long-term skilled and semiskilled jobs in the next three to four years. Nearly 25,000 hospitals will be impaneled in the scheme to meet the demand of healthcare services… if we assume that 300 new private hospitals will be opened due to demand created by AB-NHPM and each hospital will employ 200 persons, then directly 60,000 jobs in the hospitals will be created.”
Majority of the jobs will be in implementation support at the state and central levels. The management support at the trust and insurance agencies will help in rolling-out and implementation of the scheme. In addition to the 1 lakh long-term jobs, there will be more than 80 lakh short-term ‘unskilled’ and ‘semi-skilled’ jobs that the program will create.
Many of these jobs will be created during the roll-out of the mission. This will include the construction of additional hospitals and expansion of existing private hospitals. The low reimbursement rates for treatment packages will help in the creation of more private sector hospitals.
Alex Thomas, President of Association of Healthcare Providers (India) said, “The scheme, in its present form, will not be financially viable for private hospitals to expand to underserved areas. It is obvious that the package rates have not been set scientifically.”
A recent study by the government of Karnataka suggests that Ayushman Bharat scheme will contribute 30-40% of actual operations cost of the hospital. The government scheme can solve the basic problem of India having lack of hospital infrastructure.