Whatever the cost of the ambitious National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), the government is committed to bear it, NITI Aayog member Vinod K Paul said on Monday. Even though the NITI Aayog had estimated a premium of Rs 1,000-1,200 per family, to be shared between the Centre and state governments at 6:4 ratio, many analysts had predicted the premium could be twice that. Paul said the scheme’s actual cost could be known only after insurers bid for the scheme, but whatever the bid, the centre and the states would pay up.
Paul said of the 25 states that have, so far, come on board for the scheme, about half have opted for the ‘insurance model’ while others have chosen a ‘trust model’.
In the trust model, the claims would be settled from a corpus created from the contributions from the Centre and the state concerned. Many states including Karnataka currently run healthcare schemes under the trust model.
