About the Event
The newly launched Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) has the mandate to deliver health insurance coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family per year to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable Indian families. Under the larger ambit of Ayushmaan Bharat, PMJAY is envisioned to be the world’s largest health insurance programme aimed at increasing access to quality healthcare and reducing the financial burden of catastrophic expenses on poor and vulnerable groups.
This ambitious scheme comes after previous similar efforts for nation-wide health insurance, such as the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), have not yielded desired results. What can we learn from these past efforts? The third session in the Policy In-Depth series will explore some of these implementation challenges, namely – pricing, third party monitoring, regulation and insurance fraud, the current quality of government hospitals, as well as, concerns on the current capacity of the government administrative structure. Underpinning the discussion will be the significant informational requirements necessary to support the programme.
About the Speaker
Dr Jeffrey Hammer is an economist who has been researching various health and health-related policies in India and elsewhere for over 20 years. He was a staff member of the World Bank which included an appointment at their Resident Mission in Delhi from 2004-2007. He was a faculty member of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University from 2008-2018. He has also been on the core team of the 2004 World Development Report ‘Making Services Work for Poor People’ which focused on the importance of accountability mechanisms in service delivery. His recent work has been on measuring the quality of medical care and on the effect of sanitation policy on health. He is currently a founding member of Economists Without Borders and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at NCAER, Delhi.
About the Policy In-Depth Series
The Policy In-Depth Series hosted by Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research deliberates on the implementation of key welfare programmes in India, the policy decisions that direct their course and the impact this has on citizens.
Kindly click here to register or RSVP at ashrivastava@accountabilityindia.org.
