Patna: The benefits of Ayushman Bharat, that entails health insurance cover worth Rs 5 lakh for poor families would start reaching people in Bihar by September this year.

Health minister and senior BJP leader Mangal Pandey shared this information while speaking in a programme of the working committee of the BJP medical cell on Sunday.

Pandey said the health insurance scheme, which has been launched by the central government, would be implemented in trust mode in Bihar and insurance company would have no role to play in its implementation.

"This a kind of assurance mode where the service provider is paid directly by the state government for reimbursing the treatment cost to the hospital concerned which delivers the services to the persons covered under the Ayushman Bharat Scheme," he said.

The health minister said there would be a trust type of system of the state government through which the payments would be reimbursed to the hospitals concerned for serving the insured persons.

As far as hospitals that would be covered under the scheme are concerned, Pandey said all the government hospitals having surgery facilities, all the medical college hospitals and all those hospitals which are empanelled under the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) would be covered under the scheme. "Moreover, we are also discussing what should be done for adding more hospitals in the list of hospitals through which benefits of Ayushman Bharat could be availed," added the health minister.

In Bihar around 1.08 crore poor families having around 5.5 crore ofthe state population are expected to be covered under the first-of-its-kind health insurance scheme.

Pandey spoke on various schemes through which the state government was helping poor people for availing treatment of different diseases.

Former Union minister and Rajya Sabha MP Dr CP Thakur urged the medical cell members to pay more attention to the poor sections of society.

A report on various activities of the medical cell was submitted to the BJP organisational general secretary Nagendra Nath.

Delivering the inaugural address, the cell's state coordinator, Dr Manoj Kumar, urged the members to work for delivering the benefits of welfare schemes to the people in the state.