Onlykashmir.in News Desk
Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked the eighth anniversary of Ayushman Bharat by highlighting the scheme’s growth into what he described as the largest healthcare programme in the world, noting that more than 60 crore beneficiaries now have access to annual health cover of Rs 5 lakh under the initiative. In a message shared on X, the Prime Minister said the scheme was launched eight years ago on the premise that every Indian should have access to top-quality, affordable healthcare, and that the intervening years had validated that founding ambition at scale.
Modi said the scheme had enabled record savings on medical expenses for beneficiaries, a benefit he said had disproportionately helped the poor and middle-class households that have historically borne the heaviest burden of out-of-pocket healthcare spending in India. He pointed specifically to the role of Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, the network of primary health infrastructure built under the broader Ayushman Bharat umbrella, noting that these centres have together recorded more than 500 crore visits, a figure he cited as evidence of the scheme’s success in strengthening primary healthcare delivery at the grassroots level rather than concentrating benefits solely at the tertiary care level.
The anniversary comes as Ayushman Bharat continues to expand its footprint across states, with the scheme’s central health insurance component, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, having become a significant reference point in India’s healthcare financing architecture since its 2018 rollout. The scale of coverage cited by the Prime Minister, spanning 60 crore beneficiaries, underscores the programme’s position as a central pillar of the government’s social welfare architecture, alongside its role in shaping healthcare access debates in states that have negotiated their own terms of participation in the scheme over the years.
Modi closed his message by extending best wishes to all Ayushman Bharat beneficiaries, using the hashtag #8YearsOfAyushmanBharat to mark the occasion on social media, a framing that reflects the government’s continued emphasis on the scheme as a flagship achievement in its healthcare policy record heading into the anniversary’s broader public messaging push.
