Ayushman Bharat Is Now in Every State. What That Actually Changes for You

Short answer: Yes. On 8 June 2026, West Bengal signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Health Authority, becoming the 36th and final state or union territory to implement Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY. Benefits were expected to commence from July 2026, with roughly 1.24 crore eligible families in the state. Cover is up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year, cashless, for secondary and tertiary hospitalisation at 36,000+ empanelled hospitals. The change that matters most for everyone else is national portability — a card issued in one state now works at an empanelled hospital anywhere in India.

The headline is the map. The story is the portability.

“Scheme now covers all states” is a completion announcement, and completion announcements are easy to ignore.

Here is the version that affects you even if you have had a card for years: an Ayushman card issued in Bihar now works at an empanelled hospital in Delhi or Vellore. Care no longer has to happen where the card was made.

For a country where serious illness routinely means travelling to another state — because that is where the specialist is — that is not an administrative detail. That is the whole point of the card finally working the way people already needed it to.

What the cover actually is

Amount	Rs 5 lakh per family per year
Type	Cashless, secondary and tertiary hospitalisation
Where	36,000+ empanelled hospitals, government and private
Portability	Nationwide

Two limits worth being blunt about, because they are where disappointment usually happens:

• It is per family, not per person.
• It covers hospitalisation, not routine outpatient consultations, chemists’ bills or diagnostics outside an admitted episode.

Knowing that in advance is worth more than discovering it at a billing counter.

The benefit families miss most often

Indians aged 70 and above are covered irrespective of family income.

No income test. Not means-tested against what their children earn. If your parents are over 70, they are eligible — full stop.

This is consistently the least-used part of the scheme, for an entirely human reason: people assume they earn too much to qualify, so they never check. The assumption costs them a Rs 5 lakh cover they already have.

West Bengal: the honest complication

This is where a purely celebratory version of the story would mislead people who need the facts.

Swasthya Sathi, the state scheme, covered roughly 2.42 crore families on a near-universal basis — that is, without the eligibility filter PM-JAY applies. PM-JAY’s base is derived from SECC-2011 plus subsequently added categories, which is a narrower gate. Around 6 crore Swasthya Sathi beneficiaries are reported to be migrating to PM-JAY, and integration of the two for national portability was reported in July 2026.

The practical instruction for a Bengal household is therefore simple and slightly unglamorous: check, do not assume. Verify your own status at pmjay.gov.in or on 14555. A near-universal state scheme and a targeted national one do not automatically produce identical cover for identical families, and the household that discovers the gap at admission is the one that pays for it.

How to check eligibility and get the card

1. Go to pmjay.gov.in, or call 14555.
2. Check eligibility using your mobile number or ration card details.
3. Find empanelled hospitals near you at hospitals.pmjay.gov.in.
4. Most empanelled hospitals have an Ayushman Mitra desk that will help with the card and the admission paperwork.

Do this before anyone is ill. The single most common failure in this scheme is not rejection — it is a family finding out at the counter that the card was never made.

What is genuinely done, and what isn’t

Done: every state and union territory is inside the scheme, and the card travels with the patient.

Not done: eligibility remains anchored to a database compiled in 2011, empanelment is uneven between districts, and a family’s cover still depends on which list it landed on. Those are real limits and they will not be fixed by a map turning one colour.

But the map turning one colour does mean something specific and checkable: there is no longer a state where the answer is “that scheme doesn’t run here”. After that, the only question left is whether your household is actually on the list — and that one you can answer today, for free, in about four minutes.