With hundreds of crores unpaid, J&K’s empanelled hospitals push Ayushman SEHAT to the brink
The ultimatum issued by the Jammu and Kashmir Private Empanelled Hospitals and Dialysis Centres Association (JKPHDA) to de‑empanel en masse from the Ayushman Bharat PM‑JAY / SEHAT scheme from 1 July 2026 is not a routine sectoral dispute. It is a full‑blown health‑care emergency in the making, brought about not by lack of policy vision, but by the administration’s stubborn refusal to translate words into action. For two years, private hospitals have been warning that Ayushman SEHAT in J&K has slid into a “non‑performing mess”. Since March 2024, they say the scheme is at its “most non‑performing state”. Claims are delayed, package rates are unrealistic, and pre‑authorisations are a bureaucratic maze. Dues worth several hundred crores are reportedly stuck with the State Health Agency. Yet all they receive, year after year, are the same soothing phrases: assurances, reviews, sympathy — and no systemic fix. Hospitals are not charities; they are institutions that must pay salaries, procure medicines and maintain life‑saving equipment. When they continue to provide cashless treatment while the government sits on their “genuine dues”, the financial stress does not remain on the balance sheets. It spills directly onto patients’ bedsides. Nowhere is this more chilling than in the case of maintenance haemodialysis. Dialysis is not an optional procedure; it is a life-sustaining therapy, three times a week, for thousands of poor patients. Once private hospitals walk out of SEHAT, these patients will be forced to somehow find ₹8,000–10,000 every month, an impossible sum for families already crushed by inflation and joblessness. For many, this will amount to a slow, state‑engineered death sentence. JKPHDA has gone out of its way to underline that it supports the vision of Ayushman Bharat. It is not asking for privilege; it is asking for survival: immediate clearance of pending payments, rationalisation of package rates, and faster, predictable authorisations so that the scheme becomes viable instead of punitive. If a flagship health scheme cannot even keep its own providers solvent, what remains of its promise of universal health coverage? The Association has now publicly appealed to the Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Health Minister Sakeena Itoo to personally intervene and chair the Governing Council meeting on 23 June. That meeting cannot be yet another talking shop. It must end with time‑bound commitments, written orders and a transparent roadmap that hospitals and the public can hold the government to. Ayushman SEHAT was sold as a lifeline for the poorest. If the government allows that lifeline to be choked by its own indifference, it will stand accused not just of policy failure but of abandoning its most vulnerable citizens at the dialysis chair.
