-Livemint.com To stabilize crop prices and make them remunerative, the Swaminathan Commission proposed significant improvements in the implementation of MSPs Across the country, farmers are furious—and rightfully so. Four years ago, they helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, believing Narendra Modi’s claims that they would no longer suffer official neglect. But since then, conditions in agriculture have got worse. Earlier problems have worsened as farm incomes have been squeezed...

-Livemint.com Centre is soon going to issue a revised set of guidelines to address current challenges faced by the crop insurance scheme, says Ashish Bhutani, joint secretary at the agriculture ministry New Delhi: The prime minister’s flagship crop insurance scheme, which has seen an impressive rise in coverage and sum assured since its launch in 2016, is facing a number of challenges that are delaying claim settlements for farmers, a senior agriculture...

-Scroll.in Thailand spends as much of its GDP on health as India, yet it offers the entire range of healthcare services to all citizens for free. Finance Minister Arun Jailtley’s Budget speech this year and the subsequent media coverage projected Insurance coverage as being almost synonymous with universal health coverage. Nothing could be further from the truth. Health insurance is only a small part of ensuring universal health coverage. Besides, to...

-The Indian Express In the Union Budget 2018-19, an initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crore was provided for the NHPS that aims to provide medical cover of Rs 5 lakh to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families. New Delhi: TO decide the specifics of the proposed National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), the Centre has decided to call a meeting of state health secretaries shortly. Details of the scheme’s implementation — touted...

-The Hindu Neither the Budget nor the National Health Policy 2017 shows a clear health sector road map The National Health Protection Scheme announced in this year’s Budget has generated a lot of debate. The government has committed itself to “providing coverage up to ?5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation” for 10 crore poor families, with approximately 50 crore people as beneficiaries. As only ?2,000 crore...