BJP spreading lies about Swasthya Sathi scheme: State govt

KOLKATA: A recent Facebook post of Dilip Ghosh, the state BJP president, has created a furore in the political circle with Ghosh claiming that the Swasthya Sathi scheme of the state's ruling party is a hoax. In his post, he claimed: "If out of the state's 10 crore population even five percent seeks its benefits, it would cost the state's exchequer Rs 50,000 crore a year. But this year, the state's health budget is Rs 12,000 crore. Where will money for Swasthya Sathi come from?" Later the post was deleted from his official account.

According to state Health Secretary Naryan Swarup Nigam, five percent of the state's population getting hospitalised is a highly exaggerated rate. So many people cannot get hospitalised at once. It may at most be around 1 percent of the population. Secondly, the national average for per person expenditure in hospitals is around Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000. And so, it's manageable within the budget allocation.

"The state government has engaged IRDA approved Third Party Administrator (TPA) and the expenses of engaging the TPA will be borne by the government."

Nigam said: "Before starting the project we had engaged experts from Indian Statistical Institute for studying the possible expenditure and then the arrangements had been made. About one percent of the state's estimated population claiming Rs 20,000 per year on an average should cost Rs 2,000 crore.

Chandrima Bhattacharya, deputy Health minister, said: "As Swasthya Sathi scheme is getting praise worldwide rather than BJP's Ayushman Bharat, the BJP leaders are trying to defame the scheme."

Senior health officials are of the opinion that the Centre allocated Rs 6,556 crore for Ayushman Bharat in the budget for 2019-2020, but on February 1, 2020, Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman revised the budget to Rs 3,314 crore. According to the scheme, it covers 40 percent of India's population of 138 crore in 2020, the estimated beneficiary scale is around 55 crore. Going by Bengal BJP's argument, if even 5 percent of those entitled 2.75 crore seek 1 lakh benefit per year, the Centre should have to pay Rs 2,75,000 crore per year.

It may be mentioned that on December 15, the state government claimed that 60 percent of the population had enrolled for the scheme during the 'Duare Sarkar' campaign.