Death knell for noble healthcare schemes
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: April 24, 2025 -

AS all the pharmaceutical stores are profit-oriented it is but natural that pharmacies empanelled under the government-funded schemes namely the Chief Ministergi Hakshelgi Tengbang (CMHT) and the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) would feel deep remorse for agreeing with the government of Manipur to supply medicines to the in-patients and receive the payments from the government at a later stage.

To the patient parties who are enrolled under the two noble schemes, existence of empanelled pharmacies is of great relief as there are many families in the state who could not maintain healthy bank balance to foot the bills for treatment and medication of their loved ones.

However, with select pharmacies entrusted to ensure supply of the prescribed medicines, patient parties belonging to the economically underprivileged section of the society need not worry about financial crunch, generally associated when one has health issues necessitating hospitalisation.

Without an iota of doubt, launch of the CMHT and PMJAY programmes has been of immense help to the financially unsound families, unlike in the pre-CMHT/PMJAY days when treatment cost and medication bills worsened the financial position of the average patient parties.

Moreover, empanelment of privately run hospitals under the schemes facilitated access to better medical infrastructure compared to general hospitals, most of which are not only bereft of, advanced equipment but even the doctors do not hesitate from recommending treatment in private hospitals.

Sadly, the government ended the empanelment tenure with some reputed private hospitals following reports of the latter not entertaining the scheme beneficiaries over non-clearance of huge amount of pending bills by the government.

In fact, in trying to repay the debts incurred in treatment of their loved ones, some families had to mortgage or sell prized assets, including homestead land.

The salaried class may not face such a dire situation but for the ordinary families impoverishment is imminent. As such, empanelled pharmacies expressing resentment and warning to cease supply of medicines to beneficiaries of the scheme at Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences (JNIMS) from April 25 if the hospital authority does not clear the pending payment, is technically a death knell for the ordinary families and the two schemes.

As reported, JNIMS hospital has been providing cashless treatment to patients under the two government health schemes, with medicines supplied free of cost by empanelled pharmacies.

The hospital authority definitely owes an explanation to the public for repentance of the said pharmacies, which had been rendering noble service, as funds meant for clearance of the pending bills were already released by the government on January 6 and 14 this year for CMHT and on January 17 and April 11 in case of PMJAY.

As the funds have been released, there is no valid reason for the JNIMS authority not to disburse the payments to the pharmacies other than seeking percentage cuts from the pharmaceutical stores on the ground that there is huge difference between the MRP of prescribed medicines and the saleable price.

In case the empanelled pharmacies cease supply of medicines, render the two schemes useless and imperil the patients, then someone has to be held accountable.