Update on Medical Insurance Scheme RSBY
Whitefield Rising had wanted to give a Christmas and New Year gift to our staff. These are the people who work for us to make our lives easier. We came across Government of India’s medical insurance scheme Rashtriya Swastha Bima Yojna, RSBY (http://www.rsby.gov.in/ )floated by the Department of Labour. This was on Dec 10th 2013. On further enquiry, we realised that the scheme was almost closing taking applications. We collected as many applications as we could in a day’s time, reaching out to communities who in turn asked for the necessary documents. We rushed to the Labour Commissioner’s (LC) office in Bannerghatta to brief him on Whitefield Rising and implore upon him to extend the deadline for us. He gave us less than 36 hours! Then began a frenzy to collect more applications and send all information to the LC’s office in a prescribed excel format that we were initially not aware of. In all a few hundred hours of the team collectively went into this exercise. To cut a long story short, we managed to file approx. 1000 applications on Dec 13th and were given a receipt of the same from their office. The cards were to be rolled out by end January/ early February 2014. We waited patiently, keeping our fingers crossed and hoping this scheme which would provide a family a benefit of Rs 30000 annually would materialise soon.
Circa Feb 2014
We started making enquiries about the delivery dates. Response : Due to election code of conduct, nothing would transpire till elections are over.
We used this time to find out about more medical insurance schemes and came across Vajpayee Arogyasree Scheme(more on this later)
May 18th 2014
Post elections, the cards distribution started in rest of Karnataka and we were told Bangalore would start soon.
June 2014 till date
Numerous phone calls to the concerned authorities have shown general apathy. Unfortunately the Labour Commissioner has moved out and due to some political reasons and the distribution of cards has stopped. Very unfortunate circumstances. We are trying for a meeting in the last week of July to the new LC to put forward our case. We don’t know whether the meeting will be granted and what the outcome would be.
A recent Economic Times article says Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana may be shifted to Health Ministry.
It makes us helpless when people ask about RSBY status. We have had a few maids also asking us the same. What do we tell them? We had given them hope……
Well, you tried. So thanks for that. The maids, gardeners and support staff have no job security and insurance safety nets, so it’s obviously a huge part of their feeling of well-being and sense of control. A small injury can lead to immediate loss of income for example.
In the future perhaps, it would be advisable to do a trial run with 20 people which covers all phases: sign-up, getting cards, getting medical attention at a private hospital in Whitefield actually to see if they actually respect the card etc.
A lot of private hospitals, which make up bulk of medical care in Bangalore don’t respect government medical schemes because they say the government doesn’t reimburse them enough, or doesn’t pay them at all when claims are made for care provided.
Hopefully, the fact that RSBY uses private insurers will be better placed in this regard. But that will also make it more expensive for the taxpayer/public coffers.
Dear whitefieldrising.organic,
I had gone through your blog in which you encountered many problems on rsby project despite of keeping regular touch with labour commission office. Even I am indeed of same problem facing n when I contacted labour commission office Delhi, they said they have already given green flag to state govt n now it’s in their hand. When I called labour commission office bangalore I was told that rsby part of work is already done but they waiting for approval whether to involve PDS with rsby n it might start this month end. But I am not sure how authentic it is. This conversation was done last week.
Now can you kindly share with me if you have any updated news about rsby to start in Karnataka.
Dear Akshay
Connecting you to Anu so you can do this follow up together!
Thx
Nitya