Small bang for our buck: Staff

Hyderabad: Telangana state has 3.5 lakh employees and 1.5 lakh pensioners. On average, 25,000 employees and pensioners seek medical reimbursement every year.

Though the state government had promised to provide health cards for free without collecting any premium from employees unlike in undivided AP, the employees themselves are now offering to pay a premium because the existing cards are not serving any purpose.

Employees are ready to pay a premium but want the government to make all corporate hospitals accessible under the scheme. “We don’t want free health cards. We are ready to contribute some portion of premium amount. When the government in undivided AP came out with the health scheme, there was consensus on the government contributing 60 per cent and employees 40 per cent of the premium amount. However, it could not be implemented due to political developments over bifurcation of the state. We are ready to agree to the same if the TS government comes forward to implement a contributory health scheme,” said Mr G. Devi-prasad, honorary president, TNGOs Association.

Employees feel that instead of free health cards, which are of no use, it would be better to have contributory health cards that would be accepted in all corporate hospitals.

Employees say they are incurring expenditures of nearly Rs 150 crore every year towards medical costs but are not getting even 50 per cent of the amount in return under the existing medical reimbursement scheme.

“In some cases, we are incurring expenditures of Rs 1 lakh but are not getting reimbursement of even Rs 20,000,” said Mr P. Sudhakar Reddy, a government teachers’ union leader.