The ESI is an amazing institution covering over 10% of the population. The ESI is conceptualized within a health rights framework and offers a basket of benefits that no other insurance programme even attempts. Yet when experts talk of UHC or publicly funded health insurance, the ESI is almost never mentioned. Performance in terms of delivery of benefits is poor, but this is not due to lack of funds, as the ESI has a huge surplus. This conversation is about how ESI must be saved, re-vitalized and expanded, as part of the struggle to achieve the right to healthcare and Health for All. And given some of the directions of reform that are being pushed, it it is also about how not to lose an asset that we never knew we had.
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