The caretaker Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government has once again requested the State Life Insurance Corporation to restore treatment facilities in its panel hospitals under the Sehat Card Plus Scheme.
The insurance company has stopped admission of new patients to its panel hospitals once again due to non-payment of dues by the provincial government despite repeated assurances and public outcry.
This forced Health Adviser Dr Riaz Anwar to write a letter to the insurance company, pledging that the payment of all dues would be made within the promised timeframe and the company should withdraw its decision of stopping treatment and admitting new patients.
He admitted that due to the financial constraints, the payment of dues to the company was often delayed but the caretaker chief minister, chief secretary and health department ordered the release of funds for the clearance of the accumulated amount which would be done on an urgent basis.
This is the fifth time that the admission of new patients under the Sehat Card scheme had been stopped. In August, the insurance company stopped admission of new patients to its panel hospitals on which the provincial government made an emergency payment of Rs2 billion to solve the problem temporarily.
Across the province, 10 million families were registered under the health insurance scheme and so far 2.5 million patients had been treated.
Official sources told The Express Tribune that the government was not releasing the required funds for the health scheme and it had to pay dues worth of Rs21.6 billion pending for the past one year.
“Whenever the treatment is stopped and such stories are published in newspapers, the provincial government temporarily releases Rs1 or 2 billion funds. The total cost of the project is Rs33 billion per annum,” an official of the health department said.
This has put the health department in a permanent fix for the past one-and-a-half years.
Background
In December 2022, outgoing Chief Minister Mahmood Khan said that the ‘Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Universal Health Coverage Act 2022’ had been approved to provide legal protection to the Sehat Card project.
Mahmod said that the provincial government was taking steps to include the treatment of more diseases under the Sehat Card, with the aim of providing maximum relief to the citizens so that they could spend their money on education and other necessities of life.
He termed Sehat Card Plus a pro-poor and public-friendly scheme, saying that the Sehat Card Plus scheme is a comprehensive package of free medical facilities and a social security programme .
Published in The Express Tribune, September 3rd, 2023.
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