Masjid-Gurdwara demolition remark: Amarinder joins chorus for action
The BJP leader said the apology by the said leader served no purpose as it had already caused immense damage to well-meaning people.
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday announced free insurance cover for the 15 lakh families who were earlier not included in the ambit of the Ayushman Bharat-Sarbat Sehat Bima Yojana (AB-SSBY).
The CM announced his decision at the virtual Cabinet meeting, where the health department had proposed bringing these families into the government schemes covered on a co-sharing basis, which would have required the beneficiaries to pay for part of the expense.
However, Captain Amarinder suggested making the insurance cover for these families also completely free in line with his government’s promise of universal healthcare for the people of Punjab.
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Barring the families of government employees and pensioners, who were already covered under Punjab Medical Attendance Rules, all the remaining nearly 55 lakh families in the state will now come under the ambit of this scheme, an official spokesperson said after the meeting.
The state government will now be bearing a total cost of Rs 593 Crore per annum to cover 55 lakh families to provide insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per for secondary and tertiary care treatments in empanelled public and private hospitals.
The health and family welfare department has been asked to formulate the operational process for the enrolment of these left-out families under the scheme.
Notably, nearly 39.38 lakh families, including 14.64 lakh families identified as per the ‘Socio-Economic Caste Census’ (SECC) of 2011, 16.15 lakh Smart Ration Cardholder families and 5.07 lakh farmer families, 3.12 lakh construction worker families, 4481 accredited journalist families, and 33,096 small trader families, are already availing this facility under the scheme since August 20, 2019, and they have got cashless medical treatment worth over Rs 913 Crore cover in the last two years.
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