Chandigarh, Dec. 26 -- Chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Thursday gave the green signal to the health department to launch Mukh Mantri Sehat Yojana from the coming month to provide health insurance cover of Rs.10 lakh to every family in the state. Chairing a review meeting of the health department here, Mann said that the scheme is a step towards providing universal healthcare facilities, enabling people to access medical facilities without spending a penny. "Punjab will be the first state in the country where every family will be entitled to cashless treatment of up to Rs.10 lakh," he said. The meeting was attended by top officials of the department. Mann stated that the scheme covers major illnesses, critical care, surgeries, and life-saving treatments across a wide network of empanelled government and private hospitals across Punjab and Chandigarh. He said the main objective is to ensure cashless and paperless healthcare at empanelled hospitals and to reduce out-of-pocket expenditure on secondary and tertiary care. "Likewise, it will also strengthen equitable access to healthcare services across urban and rural areas and ensure timely grievance redressal and beneficiary support through digital platforms," he added. The CM said that all the expenses like hospitalisation costs, surgeries and medical procedures, ICU and critical care services, diagnostics, medicines, and consumables as per approved packages, pre- and post-hospitalisation expenses and others will be covered under the scheme. "Earlier, a family could avail treatment only up to Rs.5 lakh, but now this limit has been increased to Rs.10 lakh," he said. Although the scheme was officially 'launched' on July 8 by Mann and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal at a public event in Chandigarh, and the cabinet gave its formal approval two days later on July 10, its rollout was delayed as the required framework had to be put in place. The government had initially announced that the scheme would commence on October 2 (Gandhi Jayanti)....