Karishma: Baby Girl Born In Haryana Becomes First Beneficiary Of PM Modi’s Flagship Ayushman Bharat

A 19 day-old baby girl born in Haryana’s Karnal has become the first new born beneficiary of the Prime Minister’s Ayushman Bharat Yojana, formally the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS). The Kalpana Chawla government hospital, where Karishma was born, was reimbursed Rs 9,000 for the Caesarean operation through the scheme.

The Prime Minister in his Independence Day address had announced the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Abhiyan which comes under the rubric of the ambitious Ayushman Bharat or ‘Modicare’ project. Haryana launched the scheme with 26 hospitals in the state on the same day as the speech.

The salience of this one of a kind healthcare project lies in its promise to cover approximately 100 million households of poor and vulnerable families as mapped by the Socio-Economic Caste Census. The insurance coverage promised under this scheme lies to the tune of Rs 5,00,000 per family per year and would cover both secondary and tertiary hospitalisation.

The scheme also provides for the benefits of portability and enables beneficiaries to avail of cashless benefits from public and private hospitals which are empanelled under the scheme.