LAHORE: In a major overhaul of its flagship health scheme, the Punjab government has decided to pull cancer and cardiac treatment out of the Health Card Programme altogether, setting up two dedicated Chief Minister’s initiatives to handle these costly and often life-or-death procedures instead.
The rationale, officials say, is straightforward: cancer and heart disease cases have been eating up a disproportionate chunk of the Health Card’s budget, and pulling them out into their own funding streams should free up money for everything else the scheme is supposed to cover.
The numbers behind the shift are significant. The government has set aside Rs16 billion in total for the two new programmes, with the lion’s share — Rs13 billion — going to the Chief Minister’s Cancer Programme. The remaining Rs3 billion has been reserved for cardiac surgeries under a separate Cardiac Surgery Programme.
What changes for patients is where they go for treatment. Anyone needing cancer care or a cardiac procedure will no longer be routed through hospitals empanelled under the Health Card system. Instead, they will be sent to specialised government-designated centres, where treatment will continue to be free but will now run through the new dedicated channels rather than the old insurance-style arrangement.
The Punjab Health Initiative Management Company (PHIMC) has been handed the job of rolling out and monitoring the new setup, according to sources familiar with the plan. That means PHIMC will be responsible for how the funds are spent, whether quality standards are being met at the designated centres, and how smoothly the whole system runs on the ground.
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Officials involved in the policy say there’s more at stake here than just budgeting. Cancer drugs and cardiac stents are notoriously expensive and have long been flagged as areas vulnerable to overbilling or misuse. By bringing procurement and monitoring of these items directly under government watch, authorities are hoping to tighten oversight and cut down on the kind of financial irregularities that can creep into high-cost treatments.
There’s also a continuity argument behind the move. The Health Card Programme has, on more than one occasion, run into payment disputes with the insurance companies administering it — friction that ended up disrupting services for patients who needed urgent cardiac procedures or were midway through cancer treatment. Officials believe that giving these two categories their own ring-fenced budgets and a separate management structure will insulate patients from exactly that kind of disruption going forward.
