Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday announced the expansion of the Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY), the flagship health assurance scheme of his government, to cover all rural poor families that were left out. “All left-out families of rural areas of our state will be assured of cashless care in private hospitals for critical ailments. In this phase of expansion of the BSKY, all rural families of Odisha (except regular government employees and income tax payees), who are presently not covered under BSKY, will be eligible to be covered under the new initiative,” said Patnaik. The new beneficiaries will receive a ‘BSKY Nabin Card’ which will entitle them to avail of similar benefits as BSKY beneficiaries. Nearly one crore households in Odisha are at present covered under the BSKY which entitles them to cashless care of Rs 5 lakh per annum (up to Rs 10 lakh for women members of the family) in empanelled private hospitals both inside and outside Odisha, for identified critical illnesses. With the latest announcement, around 10 lakh additional families will be added, covering nearly 90 per cent of the population of the state, said health department sources. “This will ensure that no family in Odisha is left vulnerable due to lack of financial resources to meet high expenditure for critical illnesses. Thus, fulfilling the promise of universal health coverage for the people of Odisha,” said the chief minister. The Patnaik government launched the BSKY in August 2018 to provide universal health coverage with special emphasis on the health protection of economically vulnerable families. It was presented as an alternative to the Centre’s Ayushman Bharat scheme which the Odisha government has not implemented in the state. In the first phase of BSKY, all services in public health facilities were made free of cost for all persons, irrespective of income or residence. BSKY provided cashless healthcare in private health facilities for all ration card holders in the second phase, which proved a gamechanger for the party ahead of the panchayat polls in 2022. Calling it a unique model for universal health coverage, leveraging the strengths of both the public and private sectors to provide comprehensive health assurance to the people, Patnaik said under BSKY, every month over 45 lakh persons receive free healthcare at public health facilities in the state, while 1.3 lakh persons receive cashless care. This amounts to treatment worth Rs 260 crore each month at empanelled private hospitals. In the past five years, BSKY has provided nearly 21 lakh patients with cashless healthcare of about Rs 4,500 crore in private hospitals alone, said Patnaik.
