Public health experts, including doctors from the AIIMS, on Wednesday questioned the potential of government’s flagship healthcare scheme, Ayushman Bharat, claiming it was an “official channel” through which public money will go to the private sector. Referring to implementation of such healthcare schemes in the past, experts pressed for urgent need to strengthen publicly funded hospitals to offer universal healthcare, while speaking at a panel discussion on ‘Ayushman Bharat: Fact and Fiction’, organised by AIIMS Front for Social Consciousness in the campus of country’s premier medical institution here.
The scheme was nothing but an old wine in a new bottle, said a professor at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health of Jawaharlal Nehru University. HoD of Biochemistry at AIIMS, said Ayushman Bharat does not provide out-patient department care support, which is a major…
