RSBY Story on BBC

BBC is doing a story on RSBY and their team is visitng field and meeting people who are working for RSBY. BBC will telecast this story on 30th May at 11:00am in their programme called India Business Review and will be again shown in the night at 10:00pm.

Announcement of National Workshop of RSBY 2010

Government of India is organizing a Two-day National Workshop of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) in Chandigarh from 02nd July to 3rd July 2010. Representatives of Government of India, State Governments, Other Government Agencies, Insurance Companies, Third Party Administrators, Smart Card Agencies, Public & Private hospitals, and International Agencies who are associated with RSBY will participate in this workshop.

Interested people/ organizations may send their request to participate in this workshop by filling the registration form at http://www.rsby.in/Registration1.aspx . Please note that filling up of this form does not guarantee participation in this workshop. Government of India will send invitation to selected individuals/ organizations in advance of the event.

Hospital and NGO Workshop in Jharkhand

Government of Jharkhand is organising a workshop with NGOs and Hospitals on 24th April in Ranchi. The first half of the workshop will be focussed on discussion with NGOs and their role in RSBY. Experience of few NGOs who are working in the field will be shared. Government will discuss with NGOs about their role and how they can participate in RSBY to make it more effective in reaching the beneficiaries.

The second half of the workshop will be with hospitals and the agenda will be to discuss with hospitals about their role in RSBY and to explain them the benefits of joining RSBY. Few hospitals will share their expernece of RSBY also in this workshop.

RSBY Now on Facebook

A Group of RSBY has been created on the facebook which is called "Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana". This can also be used for information dissemination and discussions. The RSBY movie and few photographs of the scheme are already available there now.

RSBY Launched in More North Eastern States

RSBY was launched in the States of Arunachal  Pradesh and Mizoram from this year. The State Workshop was organised on 25th March in Itanagar and on 26th March in Aizawl. reresentatives of the Government of India, State Government officials, District officials, Inaurance Company representatives, TPA representatives, representatives of hospitals and NGOs participated in the workshop. In Arunachal Pradesh RSBY is being implemented by Rural Development Department and in Mizoram it is being implemented by Department of Health.

With these workshops, now RSBY has been launched in all the North Eastern States except Sikkim State.

Extension of RSBY to NREGA Beneficiaries, Railway Coolies and Hawkers

In view of the success of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) scheme, the Union government has decided to extend its benefits to NREGA beneficiaries who have worked for more than 15 days during the preceding financial year in a move to provide health insurance to them.

Railway Minister in her railway budget also announced extension of RSBY to railway coolies and hawkers across India.

In addition to the Building and Construction Workers who have already been covered under the scheme these announcements indicates that now RSBY is going to cover people who may not be BPL. 

RSBY Launched in Manipur

State workshop of RSBY was organised in Imphal on 19th February. Government of Manipur has decided to implement RSBY in all the nine districts of the State. New India Insurance Company has been selected through an open tendering process and they will be implementing the scheme in the State.

RSBY Regional workshop at Cochin

As part of the series of regional workshops, regional workshop for South and West regions was organised in Cochin on 18th and 19th Feb. Representatives of State Governments of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala along with representatives of Insurance Companies, Third Party Administrators and Smart Card Agencies participated in the workshop.

Intensive discussions took place with all the stakeholders and the perfomance of the States in implementing RSBY was reviewed. The purpose of these regional workshops is to share issues relating to  the implementation of the scheme and try to learn from each other's good practices. Another important objective of organising these workshops for Government of India is to seek feedback and suggestions from the States regarding the current issues and proposed intiatives within RSBY.

RSBY Reaches Landmark of 12 million BPL Families

In just a little over 22 months since its beginning RSBY reached the landmark of covering 12 million BPL families on 16th Feb 2010. This translates into approximately 50 million people covered under RSBY across India. RSBY has started or in the process of being implemented in 25 States now.

Following States have already started implementing the scheme:
Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Punjab, Tamilnadu, Tripura, Uttarakhand and West Bengal

RSBY is in the process of being implemented in the following States:
Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh

For further details and data regarding implementation please visit http://www.rsby.in/

New Website for RSBY

RSBY relaunched its website with a new face last week sometime. The address of the website is www.rsby.in The new website is more user friendly and easy to navigate. The main highlight of this website are as follows:

• Latest information and data about RSBY is available through this website
• Viewers can see on the front page itself the no. of smart cards which have been issued till now.
• In the scheme status page, RSBY enrollment and empanelment data is available at National, State and District level
• The contact of State Nodal Agency and the Insurer for each State has also been provided on the website
• Another new addition to the website is the new logo of RSBY which highlights the aspect of protection to a five member family
• A separate media page is available now but at present there are very few media reports available on the page.

Overall this web site is quite an improvement over the earlier one. However few more things can be added in due course of time like data on utilisation of services by beneficiaries.

RSBY Reaches to 40 Lakhs Families

RSBY reached a landmark of distributing 40 lakhs smart card by the end of 31st March 2009. This means that approximately 2 crore beneficiaries across seventeen States of India are now already covered with RSBY. Two states Delhi and Haryana have already finished one year and now in the process of renewal. In further fifteen states enrollment is going on for RSBY. Five more states are about to start the process in next months.

For a scheme which started distributing smart card only in February 2008 it is a credible achievement in only thirteen months. Considering the fact that RSBY needs the insurer to go to the village and issue smart card to the beneficiaries in the village itself after taking their fingerprint and photographs this is not a small achievement.

 

Seven general/ health insurance companies (Four public and three private) are providing benefits to BPL people. This has resulted in a healthy competition between the insurers. Insurers are also trying to work together so as to learn from the efforts of each other in different states while at the same time they are also trying to synergies their efforts wherever possible. MoLE is also constantly engaging in dialogue with the insurers, State Governments and other stakeholders to constantly fine tune the scheme and improve its efficiency.