SHILLONG, May 20 - Pooja Thapa of Meghalaya today became the 100,00,000th beneficiary of the Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme of the Central Government. She was contacted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the phone on the occasion.
�During my official tours, I would interact with Ayushman Bharat beneficiaries. Sadly, that is not possible these days but I did have a great telephone interaction with Pooja Thapa from Meghalaya, the 1 croreth beneficiary,� Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted.
Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma also tweeted: �Pooja Thapa from Meghalaya is the 1 croreth beneficiary of Ayushman Bharat, a path-breaking initiative of the PM Narendra Modiji. Just like Pooja, over 1 crore Indians are now benefitting through the National Health Insurance Scheme.�
The Ayushman Bharat scheme was launched in September, 2018, as recommended under the National Health Policy, 2017. The scheme is meant to achieve the vision of universal health coverage through insurance.
In Meghalaya, Ayushman Bharat is implemented in convergence with the Meghalaya Health Insurance Scheme and provides a Rs 5-lakh annual coverage to every household.
Across the State, several persons have benefited with the health insurance card. As every State wants to leverage this Central scheme tweaking its nomenclature, the goal to have a uniform health insurance card across the country has been defeated to some extent. Due to the different nomenclature that several States have adopted, some of these cards are not accepted in other States, although a substantial amount of the fund to the State Health departments accrues from the Centre.
