Effective health cover

Prime Minister Imran Khan launched a scheme of providing health insurance card to poor and deserving people enabling them to get the best available treatment in both government run and private hospitals. Each card will have a financial capacity of Rs.720000 and 15 million families will be benefited from this scheme, which will cover almost 80 million individuals annually for the treatment for all types of diseases. In Punjab 10 million families will be receiving the health insurance card.

The initiative of health insurance card was earlier launched at the provincial level in the previous Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf government in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. It met with a relative degree of success because before its launching a comprehensive survey about the people of the lowest strata was not conducted and data of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISCP) was used as a bench mark for the provision of this card. Although the programme did give benefit to poor people but the recipient of BISCP also included the workers of PPP who actually did not deserve to avail this facility at the expense families who lived below the poverty line. It must be ensured that this time the element of political gimmickry does not creep in this poor people friendly programme.

The Khyber Pukhtunkhwa government had signed an agreement with State Life Insurance Company to provide finances for the usage of health insurance card. It now intends to enter in agreement with a private insurance company for this purpose. This mode of financing of health insurance scheme may not be sustainable in the long run. The failure of President Obama Health Insurance scheme in a highly developed country like the United States serves a good lesson. It would have been worthwhile that health insurance models of the social welfare states of the West European had been studied by the planners and decision makers of PTI government to ensure sustainability of this people friendly initiative in cash strapped country like Pakistan. During the last year of previous provincial government of KPK there were reports of stopping of extending healthcare by private hospitals on the Insaf Health card.

The existing teaching level hospitals cannot cater for the treatment of all health insurance health card holders and the district headquarter level hospitals are merely referral centers. Majority of patients prefer treatment in the state-of-the-art private hospitals thus depriving the government hospital from a major source of revenue generation. The health infrastructure of existing teaching level hospitals needs expansion in addition to setting up more such hospitals. It is pertinent to mention that International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) and a number of foreign NGOs had established state-of-the art hospitals in the rented buildings in the decade of 1980s in Peshawar for the treatment for the war injured people from Afghanistan. The same healthcare facility can be created till such time that new well equipped hospitals are built in the metropolitan cities of the country. Moreover, the deficiency of well trained doctor, paramedics and equipments in the district headquarters hospitals must be overcome if health insurance scheme is to be made fruitful and sustainable.