Again, you are considering that all 1.3 billion or 1.0 billion or 0.8 billion people will fall ill. How can you not see that it's an unrealistic scenario? Cove

Again, you are considering that all 1.3 billion or 1.0 billion or 0.8 billion people will fall ill. How can you not see that it's an unrealistic scenario? Coverage is only provided for those who fall ill. Only critical illnesses require the entirety of $7,200. The rest of the diseases are treatable in the $1 to $200 range. The government hospitals already provide free treatment for a majority of these diseases. It's the critical illness treatment which has become a burden for the government hospitals as they don't have either the equipment or the staff or the infrastructure to cater to the patients. That's where this insurance will come handy. Instead of spending $100 billion dollars bringing the government hospitals to match state of the art private hospitals just reuse the existing private hospital infrastructure and subsidize the illness instead of wasting money on infrastructure/equipment/staffing. I can't understand how this doesn't make sense? This even lessens the load on the government hospitals so they can focus their energies treating curable diseases and leave the critical illness part to be handled by private hospitals. Trust me, we can argue however much we want, but the poor of India see this and understand the significance of this move. Many poor cancer patients (especially those with mouth cancer due to smoking tobacco/chewing gutka) who couldn't get any treatment in free government hospitals due to lack of infrastructure/equipment/staffing can get themselves treated in state of the art private hospitals. And the poor are not beggars to misuse the scheme by claiming insurance for even the simplest of diseases. They will get themselves treated in government hospitals if the particular disease can be cured for free because that's where they are comfortable going (many build rapport with the government doctors too). Only if it's not possible, would they approach the private hospitals. You need to be on the ground and understand the poor of India to be able to think beyond numbers. If numbers is all you see then there is nothing further to argue about.