Govt mulls universal health insurance
After providing life cover and accident cover, the government is now working on a universal health insurance plan. To begin with, it will provide a seamless solution to the existing cashless health schemes in states by integrating those with the Centre’s direct benefits transfer (DBT) platform. Later, these would be scaled up. “Encouraged by the success of the social security schemes launched earlier this year, we are now looking at products in the health insurance sector by ensuring access. We are discussing it with states,” said a government official who did not wish to be named. The government is holding talks with states providing cashless health insurance , such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. The idea is to provide their schemes through the DBT platform. “We are building a DBT platform. Under that, we will provide SMS and phone call notifications on money transfers. Besides, we are building a web or smartphone app. Once the architecture is ready, we load hea...