Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said he was working on an initiative for using the unclaimed funds in government investments for senior citizens’ healthcare.

He noted that the idea of using the unclaimed funds was there in the last Finance Bill, but the scheme was yet to be worked out.

Jaitley was speaking at a meeting to mark the landmark achievement of the Kerala government’s ‘Karunya’ scheme.

Jaitley pointed out that India was an ‘uninsured society.’ It was also an ‘un-pensioned society’ as only 11 per cent of the elderly received pensions. “This is exactly where the state should step in,” he said and added that food subsidy, crop insurance and minimum support prices were some of the scheme that the government implemented to save the people from distress.

The government wanted every poor persons to be linked to the banking system so that they could access insurance and pension schemes, he added.

Noting that the cost of healthcare had escalated in the past few years, Jaitley said that still, it was just a fraction of many advanced countries. The quality of healthcare had also increased. This was why many patients from other countries were coming to India for treatment. However, there was a shortage of half a million doctors in the country.

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