- PM-JAY is the world’s largest health insurance/ assurance scheme fully financed by the government.
- It provides a cover of Rs. 5 lakhs per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization across public and private empanelled hospitals in India.
- Over 10.74 crore poor and vulnerable entitled families (approximately 50 crore beneficiaries) are eligible for these benefits.
- PM-JAY provides cashless access to health care services for the beneficiary at the point of service, that is, the hospital.
- PM-JAY envisions to help mitigate catastrophic expenditure on medical treatment which pushes nearly 6 crore Indians into poverty each year.
- It covers up to 3 days of pre-hospitalization and 15 days post-hospitalization expenses such as diagnostics and medicines.
- There is no restriction on the family size, age or gender.
- All pre–existing conditions are covered from day one.
- Benefits of the scheme are portable across the country i.e. a beneficiary can visit any empanelled public or private hospital in India to avail cashless treatment.
- Services include approximately 1,393 procedures covering all the costs related to treatment, including but not limited to drugs, supplies, diagnostic services, physician's fees, room charges, surgeon charges, OT and ICU charges etc.
- Public hospitals are reimbursed for the healthcare services at par with the private hospitals.
Benefit cover under various Government-funded health insurance schemes in India have always been structured on an upper ceiling limit ranging from an annual cover of INR30,000 to INR3,00,000 per family across various States which created a fragmented system. PM-JAY provides cashless cover of up to INR5,00,000 to each eligible family per annum for listed secondary and tertiary care conditions. The cover under the scheme includes all expenses incurred on the following components of the treatment.
- Medical examination, treatment and consultation
- Pre-hospitalization
- Medicine and medical consumables
- Non-intensive and intensive care services
- Diagnostic and laboratory investigations
- Medical implantation services (where necessary)
- Accommodation benefits
- Food services
- Complications arising during treatment
- Post-hospitalization follow-up care up to 15 days
The benefits of INR 5,00,000 are on a family floater basis which means that it can be used by one or all members of the family. The RSBY had a family cap of five members. However, based on learnings from those schemes, PM-JAY has been designed in such a way that there is no cap on family size or age of members. In addition, pre-existing diseases are covered from the very first day. This means that any eligible person suffering from any medical condition before being covered by PM-JAY will now be able to get treatment for all those medical conditions as well under this scheme right from the day they are enrolled.
Coverage under PM-JAY
Including the poorest and most vulnerable population of any country in the health insurance programme is often the most challenging because they cannot pay any premium and are the hardest to reach. Many times they are also not literate and, therefore, require a very different approach for awareness generation. This is true for most Lower and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) and India is not an exception.
Thus, PM-JAY has been rolled out for the bottom 40 per cent of poor and vulnerable population. In absolute numbers, this is close to 10.74 crore (100.74 million) households. The inclusion of households is based on the deprivation and occupational criteria of the Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011 (SECC 2011) for rural and urban areas, respectively. This number also includes families that were covered in the RSBY but were not present in the SECC 2011 database.
The SECC involves ranking of the households based on their socio-economic status. It uses exclusion and inclusion criteria and accordingly decides on the automatically included and automatically excluded households. Rural households which are included (not excluded) are then ranked based on their status of seven deprivation criteria (D1 to D7). Urban households are categorised based on occupation categories.
In line with the approach of the Government to use the SECC database for social welfare schemes, PM-JAY also identifies targeted beneficiary families through this data.
Out of the total seven deprivation criteria for rural areas, PM-JAY covered all such families who fall into at least one of the following six deprivation criteria (D1 to D5 and D7) and automatic inclusion(Destitute/ living on alms, manual scavenger households, primitive tribal group, legally released bonded labour) criteria:
- D1- Only one room with kucha walls and kucha roof
- D2- No adult member between ages 16 to 59
- D3- Households with no adult male member between ages 16 to 59
- D4- Disabled member and no able-bodied adult member
- D5- SC/ST households
- D7- Landless households deriving a major part of their income from manual casual labour
For urban areas, the following 11 occupational categories of workers are eligible for the scheme:
- Ragpicker
- Beggar
- Domestic worker
- Street vendor/ Cobbler/hawker / other service provider working on streets
- Construction worker/ Plumber/ Mason/ Labour/ Painter/ Welder/ Security guard/ Coolie and other head-load worker
- Sweeper/ Sanitation worker/ Mali
- Home-based worker/ Artisan/ Handicrafts worker/ Tailor
- Transport worker/ Driver/ Conductor/ Helper to drivers and conductors/ Cart puller/ Rickshaw puller
- Shop worker/ Assistant/ Peon in small establishment/ Helper/Delivery assistant / Attendant/ Waiter
- Electrician/ Mechanic/ Assembler/ Repair worker
- Washer-man/ Chowkidar
Even though PM-JAY uses the SECC as the basis of eligibility of households, many States are already implementing their own health insurance schemes with a set of beneficiaries already identified. Thus, States have been provided the flexibility to use their own database for PM-JAY. However, they will need to ensure that all the families eligible based on the SECC database are also covered.
Expansion of coverage by States under PM-JAY and convergenceVarious States have been implementing their own health insurance/assurance schemes over the past couple of decades. Most of these schemes provide cover for tertiary care conditions only. The benefit cover of these schemes is mostly available within the State boundaries except some smaller States have empanelled a few hospitals outside the State boundaries. Very few States had converged their schemes with the erstwhile RSBY scheme and many of them were operating independently. This was due to the lack of flexibility in the design of the RSBY, which although initially helped in quick scale-up but became a challenge over a period of time and offered limited flexibility to the States.
Even though these schemes were targeting the poor and vulnerable, there were large variations across States in terms of eligibility criteria and databases. Few States were using the food subsidy database while some others had created a separate database for their welfare schemes.
The primary objectives for launching PM-JAY were to ensure comprehensive coverage for catastrophic illnesses, reduce catastrophic out-of-pocket expenditure, improve access to hospitalisation care, reduce unmet needs, and to converge various health insurance schemes across the States. PM-JAY will also establish national standards for a health assurance system and is providing national portability of care. At the implementation level, the States are given the flexibility to use their own database if they were already implementing a health insurance/ assurance scheme and were covering more families than those eligible as per the SECC 2011 database. However, such States shall ensure that all families eligible as per the SECC data are covered and not denied benefits.
Gujarat State PMJAY Scheme
Gujarat State Government has merged PMJAY i.e. Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana and MA Card i.e. Mukhyamantri Amrutam Vatsalya Yojana in association with Central Government of India in the Year 2019. Now onwards all MA Card Beneficiaries will get Benefit of PMJAY Card.
Criteria for Registering into PMJAY MA Yojana (Only for Gujarat Beneficiaries)
1) Family Income for Normal Peoples is Rs. 4,00,000.00/- p.a. (Four Lakhs) and for Senior Citizens its Rs. 6,00,000.00/- p.a. (Six Lakhs).
OR
2) Family holding MA Card issued by Government of Gujarat under MA Yojana.
OR
3) Must have Name in SECC 2011 Data as data issued by Central Government of India.
Documents Required for Registering under PMJAY MA Yojana
1) Aadhaar Card of Each Members
2) Ration Card of Family (All those family members will be eligible for such scheme whose name is in Ration Card).
3) Income Certificate of the Head of the Family issued by Gram Panchayat / Nagar Palika / Mamlatdar (with Barcode and Computerized Certificate required.)
OR
Family must hold MA Card.
Process to Register for PMJAY MA Card
1) Visit any nearest CSC
OR
2) Visit any Nearby Government Hospital
OR
3) Contact Us to Register: Click Here to Contact us
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