Examining India’s National Health Insurance Scheme: Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY)

Abstract

In September 2018, India launched one of the world’s largest health insurance programmes, PM-JAY, targeting more than 500 million economically and socially disadvantaged Indians, close to 40% of the population. PM-JAY is publicly funded and covers hospitalisation costs in public and private health facilities.

This talk will present the findings of a mixed methods study that examined the early days of PM-JAY implementation in six states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Meghalaya, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The data was collected in 2019-2020, almost a year after PM-JAY was launched, and included household and hospital surveys, focus group discussions and interviews. We studied the PM-JAY implementation process and demand- and supply-side factors that affected access to hospitalisations. The talk will also reflect on the practicalities of evaluating a large scheme in a vast country like India and the balance between the need for generating sound scientific evidence and the political and implementation realities.

About the speaker

Dr Divya Parmar

Divya is a Senior Lecturer in Global Health at the School of Life Course and Population Sciences, King’s College London. She is interested in studying the socio-cultural-economic drivers of health inequalities and the intentional (and unintentional) impacts of policies and programmes. Gender and equity analyses are central to most of her work. She has worked in several low- and middle-income countries including India, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Ghana, Senegal, Brazil and the Caribbean.

Her recent research includes co-designing interventions with communities including a GACD-MRC-funded project using implementation science and participatory methods to co-develop and evaluate programmes for addressing the mental health of Indigenous adolescents in Brazil and Dominica. Divya also advises the WHO team working on strategic purchasing for universal health coverage. She was the lead author of ‘Breaking Barriers: Towards more gender-responsive and equitable health systems’, a chapter in the 2019 WHO Global Monitoring Report on Universal Health Coverage, which was launched at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019.

Lunch will be served from 12 pm. The seminar runs from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm.