Govt ropes in Nilekani for healthcare scheme

New Delhi: Tech billionaire Nandan Nilekani will assist the government in developing IT infrastructure for the mega National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), which seeks to cover 10-crore families, a senior Niti Aayog official has said.

The IT infrastructure for the healthcare scheme will be on a huge scale as was required for Aadhaar and will have to be scaled up gradually in view of the massive range of the programme. Former UIDAI chairman Nilekani – the brain behind the Aadhaar – is also a member of the GST return simplification committee.

“We have consulted Nilkeni, we want to build Aadhaar-like model for the scheme (NHPS)… He has agreed to help us,” the official said. The premium on insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh for every eligible household under the NHPS has been pegged at around Rs 900-1,000 per family annually, lower than the earlier estimate of Rs 1000-1,200.

Under the funding arrangement, the Centre will provide 60% fund, while the remaining money would have to come from respective states. In case of special category states, the Centre will provide 90% of the fund.

In his Budget speech earlier this month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had provided an initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crore for NHPC which aims to provide a medical cover of up to Rs 5 lakh to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families, constituting 40% of India’s total population.