The Centre plans to provide free healthcare to elderlies above 70 years of age through the Ayushman Bharat scheme, President Droupadi Murmu said in her address to Parliament on Thursday.

The Ayushman Bharat scheme, which provides hospitalisation cover of ₹5 lakh per family annually across government and empanelled private hospitals, currently covers roughly 120 million poor and vulnerable households across the country or 550 million people.

The BJP in its 2024 general election manifesto had pledged to expand the Ayushman Bharat scheme “to cover senior citizens”.

President Murmu’s announcement, a part of her first speech to the newly-elected members of the 18th Lok Sabha, will imply that healthcare services under the scheme will be made available to around 55 million more people (25 million men, 30 million women) aged above 70.

The Ayushman Bharat initiative announced in 2018 has two components — 1,50,000 health and wellness centres across the country that provide free essential drugs and diagnostic services, and the Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (PM-JAY)
that covers hospitalisation, three days of pre-hospitalisation and 15 days of post-hospitalisation expenses.

The PM-JAY, the world’s largest health insurance scheme fully financed by the government, is intended to help mitigate “catastrophic health expenses” resulting mainly from hospitalisation.

Health experts classify expenditure levels as catastrophic when they compel households to significantly alter their lifestyle or to borrow money.

Studies that preceded the PM-JAY programme had suggested that catastrophic health expenditure pushed nearly 60 million people in the country into poverty
each year.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai, had in a 2022 study estimated the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure to be 33 per cent in households with “high old-age dependency” — defined as households with at least one person aged 60 years or older living with at least one adult aged between 18 and 60 years.

The incidence of catastrophic health expenditure was 23 per cent even in “low old-age dependency households” — defined as households with one person aged 60 years or older living with at least two adults aged between 18 and 60 years.

Public health experts on Thursday applauded the announcement that the Ayushman Bharat scheme will be extended to those above 70 years, saying the evidence shows that households with elderlies are at enhanced risk of facing significant expenses on hospitalisation and medicines.

“Ideally, the scheme should have been expanded to all senior citizens, those aged 60 or older,” a public health specialist with a Central government health institution said.

“But that would have significantly expanded the number of people eligible for the scheme,” the health specialist said.

According to some population projections, expanding the scheme to cover people in the 60 to 70 years age group would mean adding 80 million potential beneficiaries.