Telangana State (TS) government is all set to replace the existing Aarogyasri scheme with a new comprehensive healthcare programme and is planning to issue separate health cards to all those under below poverty line (BPL) in the state.
For providing comprehensive healthcare facilities, the Telangana government may start issuing health cards in place of existing Aarogyasri cards with complete Telangana mark. Moreover, the state government is also thinking of brining drastic changes to the existing healthcare scheme for which the government is expected to set up a high level committee soon.
According to sources in the state health department, the state government is of the view that all the earlier schemes were designed keeping in view the entire Andhra Pradesh (AP), but after bifurcation of the state, TS government wants to have its own mark in every scheme. The earlier Aarogyasri healthcare cards are having AP emblem and pictures of previous Chief Minister on the cards. Replacing this, the new healthcare cards to be issued by TS government will have Telangana State government emblem and picture of present CM.
Moreover, through this exercise, the TS government is also planning to weed out the bogus healthcare cards which are issued based on bogus white ration cards during the earlier governments. “Earlier, the Aarogyasri healthcare scheme is linked with the white ration cards and those whoever possessed white ration cards were allowed to avail the Aarogyasri healthcare scheme. As there are more than 22 lakh bogus white ration cards in the state, the government is bearing unnecessary financial burden. To avoid this, the state government is planning to overhaul the entire scheme and streamline it with more transparency and accountability,” said a senior official in the healthcare department.
The Aarogyasri scheme was started earlier by late Dr Y S Rajashekara Reddy, the former CM of united Andhra Pradesh in the year 2007 is purely linked with family income and only those families below poverty line were eligible for this scheme. The main initiative of this scheme is to provide quality healthcare in the corporate hospitals to the poor.
But now, the Telangana government is planning to add more diseases to the scheme and provide health cards to all the poor irrespective of their family income. Very soon the state government is also planning to issue health cards to Telangana government employees on lines similar to the new scheme.