Govt to link Modicare with Aadhaar to keep fake beneficiaries at bay

The government-run National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), dubbed as Modicare, claimed to be the world’s largest health cover, will use Aadhaar to ensure right persons get the treatment.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has also recommended the same while formulation of the NHPS on the use of Aadhaar.

Talking about the use of Aadhaar in health scheme, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey to ET said that Aadhaar will keep fake beneficiaries at bay so that genuine people can get all the services conveniently. The ultimate winner will be people as fraudsters will get discredited. Genuine people will face no difficulty in availing the insurance.

Entrackr's queries on the implementation of the scheme remain unanswered till the publication of this report.

According to Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act mandates that money spent on any scheme from the Consolidated Fund of the country has to be linked with Aadhaar and the Centre has imposed an additional cess of 1% to get Rs 11,000 crore for this scheme. Meanwhile, the safety of Aadhaar was recently questioned when a report revealed data availability at a mere cost of Rs 500.

At present, the Centre transfers LPG subsidy via Aadhaar and DBT to almost 150 million people.

A senior government official on the condition of anonymity said for the programme as big as this, which is going to benefit 500 million people, Aadhaar would be instrumental. It will help eliminate admitting fake patients. Many such instances of misuse had happened in the past, he added.

On February 1, FM Arun Jaitley announced a medical cover of Rs 5 lakh for poor families. Modicare shares its blueprint with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) implemented in the USA. It will increase the insurance cover per family from Rs 30,000 under the extant RSBY, to Rs.5 lakh.

As per an estimate, the NHPS will require an expenditure outlay of over Rs 1 lakh crore ($1,000 billion). Experts in the industry have also questioned the possibility of the scheme after similar scheme, meant to cover health expenses up to Rs.1 lakh per family, was announced in 2016 and not implemented.

Currently, the govt run six major public health insurance schemes Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), Employees’ State Insurance Scheme (ESIS), Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS), Aam Aadmi Bima Yojana (AABY), Janashree Bima Yojana (JBY) and Universal Health Insurance Scheme (UHIS).