Janani shishu suraksha karyakram and its repercussions on out of pocket expenditure

This paper primarily focuses upon the repercussions of Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK) scheme on the out of pocket expenditure incurred by the beneficiaries. This paper examines the pattern of spending by the beneficiaries on various components of JSSK at aggregated and disaggregated levels that is analyzing the expenditure incurred on diet, diagnosis, transportation and medicines separately and collectively on maternal and child health. The primary survey conducted across various districts of Delhi unveils that beneficiaries are still incurring huge costs on health and the larger share of the expenditure is on diagnosis mainly because of infrastructure bottlenecks. Diagnosis was followed by medicine which is because of lack of timely availability of drugs. The scheme also guaranteed free transportation services to the beneficiaries but due to lack of ambulances and narrow inaccessible lands beneficiaries were still incurring costs on transportation. Diet also constituted an important part of the health care scheme but provision of raw food items like eggs breads etc defeated this component of the scheme as well. Thus this paper shows the presence of various infrastructure and other bottlenecks which are defeating the ultimate aim of the scheme that is to reduce the out-of-pocket expenditure of the beneficiaries.