The government has roped in Infosys co-founder and tech billionaire Nandan Nilekani to help them in developing IT infrastructure for the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), which seeks to cover 10-crore families.
The IT infrastructure for the health care will be of huge scale, similar to Aadhaar, a senior Niti Aayog official was quoted as saying to PTI. Nilekani has agreed to help the government to build Aadhaar like a model for NHPS, he added.
#NewsFromNITI: @NandanNilekani discussing the IT architecture for #NHPS with NITI CEO @amitabhk87, with Adviser (Health) @IasAlok & #AyushmanBharat Director @drdineshias #NayiNITINayiDishaNayaBharat pic.twitter.com/tDL2ZnEVc1
— NITI Aayog (@NITIAayog) February 21, 2018
Meanwhile, Entrackr’s queries to NITI Aayog and Nandan Nilekani did not elicit any response till the publication of the report.
On Feb 1 Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech had provided an initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crore for NHPC which aims to provide a medical cover of up to Rs 5 lakh to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families. The Govt will provide 60 percent fund, while the remaining money would have to come from respective states.
The premium on insurance cover has been pegged at around Rs 900-1,000 per family annually, lower than the earlier estimate of Rs 1000-1,200.
Under the funding arrangement, the Centre will provide 60 percent fund, while the remaining money would have to come from respective states. In case of special category states, the Centre will provide 90 percent of the fund.
Talking about the use of Aadhaar in health scheme, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey had 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 beneficiaries will face no difficulty in availing the insurance.
Earlier, Nilekani had left Infosys in 2009 to build the Aadhaar, which is hailed as the world’s largest biometric identification project.
However, there have been multiple reports of data breaches from several government portals relating to Aadhaar card details, seriously impinging upon the privacy of millions of citizens. Recently, the safety of Aadhaar was questioned when a report revealed data availability at a mere cost of Rs 500.
The government had acknowledged that there had been six incidents of such happening involving money around Rs 1.5 crore from banks.
Meanwhile, 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).
