A day after SAD dubbed Punjab Government’s Sarbat Sehat Bima Yojna as “the biggest fraud”, Punjab Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on Thursday termed the allegations as “baseless and depicting SAD’s frustration”.

At the same time, he said that the State Government covered Punjab’s 76 pe rcent population under the scheme to facilitate 1396 health packages which makes Punjab one of the leading State in terms of population covered under this scheme.

It was also decided to reserve only 124 treatment services in Government Health Institutes out of 1396 health packages entailed under the Universal Health Insurance Scheme, he addded.

“On one hand, the initiative can elevate the income of Government Hospitals, on the other hand, it would ensure that the patient does not suffer inconvenience in case of emergency, referral would be allowed by Government hospital to the empanelled Private hospital. In case, if the treatment is not available with the Government hospital within the District, the patient can be referred to any empanelled Private hospital,” Sidhu clarified.

Sidhu said that at first glance, SAD’s statement shows that they are advocating expensive treatment of primary and secondary level available in private hospitals and they also want to end the autonomy of Government Hospitals thereby posing a danger to their existence.

“Presently, the government hospitals are already providing free treatment under NHM programs which would have been diverted to the private hospitals had the 124 procedures not been restricted to government hospitals,” said Sidhu.

Notably, the 124 procedures are secondary care procedures, facilities of which are available in the government hospitals.

For treatment of tertiary care procedures that involve high cost surgeries or procedures, people are free to go to any of the empanelled private hospitals.

“It is very essential to handhold the Public sector to enable them to compete with the Private sector,” said Sidhu adding that this path is taken by most of the neighbouring States as well as southern states of the country that have their successful healthcare insurance programs.

For instance, in Haryana around 146 healthcare procedures are reserved, in Tamil Nadu 681 procedures, in Maharashtra 460 procedures, Madhya Pradesh 472 procedures, Kerala 235, Gujrat 200 procedures and in Karnataka 443 procedures are reserved in the Government hospitals, he said.

Sidhu maintained that the government civil hospitals have the required doctors and infrastructure to provide treatment of those packages that have been reserved.

“The packages reserved are those packages that have higher rate of abuse amongst the insurance scheme. The higher tertiary care surgeries such as all heart surgeries, burn treatment, cancer treatment, any other complicated or higher-end surgeries, dialysis, etc all are open in both private and public hospitals,” he added.

Replying the another issue raised by SAD, he said that not only 250 listed government hospitals, but all government hospitals in the state are being strengthened at all costs by the State Government so as to ensure the health facilities on the door steps of citizens residing in rural and remote areas.