The High Court ordered attachment of salaries of four senior officials, including Principal Secretary of the Health Department Kumar Rahul, for not paying private hospitals despite receiving funds of Rs 350 crore from the Center under the Ayushman Bharat PM-Jay Chief Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme. had given After this, the Minister of Health Dr. Balbir Singh has claimed that the government neither diverted nor misused a single money.
Talking to journalists at Punjab Bhavan, Dr. Balbir said that private hospitals which are not treating patients under the Ayushman scheme will be removed from the panel. The Health Minister clarified that there has been no misappropriation of central government funds, but Punjab owes Rs 249 crore to the central government under the scheme.
The minister said that 44.99 lakh families have been covered under the scheme and 772 hospitals have been listed including 210 public, 556 private and six central government hospitals. The budget is shared between the central and state governments in the ratio of 60:40 for only 16.65 lakh socio-economic caste census households, while the state bears the budget for the remaining over 28 lakh households.
Dr. Balbir Singh pointed out that the previous governments were running the scheme under the insurance mode under which they paid the premium and on December 29, 2021, the contract with the insurance company entrusted to them was suddenly canceled leading to chaos. . He said, “Our government inherited a broken system and had to bring the scheme under trust mode.”
The health minister said that an amount of Rs 249.81 crore, which includes administrative charges of Rs 51.34 crore and arrears of Rs 17.07 crore, is pending with the central government. He informed that a team of senior officials of the state health agency held a meeting with Union Health Minister JP Nadda and requested him to release the installments of the pending payments so that we can pay the private hospitals.
The health minister said that I had personally written to Union Health Minister JP Nadda for the meeting to request the release of pending payments. He assured that there is no diversion of central government funds and all funds are being used only for public welfare.
The minister blamed technical glitches after switching to the new software launched by the National Health Agency (NHA) in February 2024 for the delay in payments to hospitals. However, the state health agency took immediate steps to address the issue. Dr. Balbir said that those who do not want to be treated under the Ayushman Bharat scheme through private hospitals will be removed from the panel as there is a long list of hospitals to come on the panel.