PML-N government initiates schemes for public backed by massive media advertisements, with the tall claims to provide relief to the masses. But implementation of schemes remains an illusion. The multibillion-rupee health insurance plan launched four months ago by the Prime Minister seems to be failing already because of poor planning and has not been implemented. Tall claims remained just rhetoric.
The insurance scheme, worth Rs9.1 billion, aimed to provide cashless health services to the poorest. While the three-year scheme was meant to offer free healthcare to people in 23 districts of the country in its first phase, it has now emerged that its intended beneficiaries have still not been identified.
Scheme was supposed to face difficulties due to certain reasons. Firstly, its always hard to implement a scheme without proper idea of population of any area. Then there was another issue after getting health insurance cards people would have no idea where they will be able to use these to avail medical services. Surveys were not held to view basic health infrastructure in different area, for instance scheme could not be launched in few districts such as Bahawalnagar in Punjab, and Chaghi in Balochistan due to lack of health infrastructure in these regions. Question arises that how government can ignore basic health infrastructure needed to be put in place first?
Many tehsil and district- level hospitals have neither capacity nor the infrastructure available to provide complete health services. In this case rendering the health insurance cards would remain useless in such areas. Lack of coordination between centre and provinces also causing delay in implementation of insurance plan.
Govt needs to spend its resources on providing proper health infrastructure.
