Chairman Privatization Commission Muhammad Zubair and Minister of State for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar jointly chairing proposal evaluation meeting of PM's Health Insurance Programme. PHOTO: APP
The government opened the financial bids to execute the three-year targeted free health insurance scheme for the poorest here on Wednesday.
The government-owned State Life Insurance Corporation offered the lowest bid of Rs1,300 per family annually to extend priority and secondary health facilities in 23 districts of the country.
The final bid price is almost 50% less than what the government had estimated in its PC-I document of the project. It calculated the secondary health coverage cost at Rs2,000 per family and Rs500 for tertiary health package.
The State Life gave a Rs999.99 per family offer for secondary care and Rs299.99 for tertiary care, bringing its total bid to Rs1,300 per family. The State Life Insurance Corporation is under the administrative control of Ministry of Commerce.
Read: National health insurance to be launched by year-end
Jubilee General Insurance gave the second lowest bid of Rs2,449 per family followed by the consortium of Adamjee Insurance and Alfalah Bank that gave Rs3,067 bid.
“The corporation made the offer on no-profit no-loss basis under its Corporate Social Responsibility,” said State Life Insurance Corporation General Manager Health Nadeem Bessey while talking to The Express Tribune.
Some concerns raised
While declaring the State Life Insurance Corporation as the winner, Minister of State for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar was blunt in her assessment of the successful bidder. “Despite capacity constraints of the winner, the government does not have an option but to give the contract to State Life Insurance Corporation to meet the requirements of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority.”
She highlighted that State Life Insurance Corporation had failed to execute Waseela-e-Sehat scheme under the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP).
The minister urged the winner to build capacity and ensure that the poorest get quality health services.
However, Bessey refused to share full responsibility of the Waseela-e-Sehat programme, insisting that the problem lied with the enrollment of people and this task had been performed by other agencies.
“The successful execution of the programme is largely dependent upon the insurance company’s ability to deliver,” said Privatisation Commission Chairman Mohammad Zubair.
Zubair co-chairs the National Steering Committee of the Health Insurance programme along with the Health Minister.
The National Steering Committee will meet today (Thursday) to formally approve State Life Insurance Corporation as the successful bidder.
Read: Government has done nothing and is still sleeping, complain doctors
In the first phase, each provincial government has picked four districts, which will be covered under the scheme. Two districts each from Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan, two agencies of Fata and the federal capital will be covered under the programme.
The insurance company will identify roughly 10 million individuals earning less than Rs200 a day in 23 districts by using BISP data. The identified families will be entitled to avail up to Rs50,000 per year in secondary health care facilities. A beneficiary family will also be entitled to get up to Rs250,000 against seven serious diseases like heart attack, diabetes, burn injuries, kidney treatment excluding its transplantation and cancer under the tertiary care package.
The federal government will bear the cost of tertiary care while the provincial governments will finance the secondary care treatment.
The government had initially envisaged to cover 100 million poor people, which would have cost Rs45 billion. However, due to financial constraints, the scope of the scheme was reduced to only 23 districts, covering 10 million.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 17th, 2015.
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