Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's National Health Protection Scheme, nicknamed Modicare, is all set for rollout on August 15. 

The scheme intends to provide 100 million families with health coverage for treatment of up to 7,300 dollars per year per family. It will increase the insurance cover per family by over 1,500 percent from about 440 US dollars under the existing affordable healthcare scheme. Under Modicare, four in ten Indians will have access to secondary and tertiary care in government and private hospitals within an insurance cap earmarked per family. 

Professor Jagdish Shettigar from the Birla Institute of Management Technology told CGTN's Asia Today that Modicare is ambitious because the scheme is going to cover more than one-third of India's population. 

Besides, access to healthcare is a major problem in the country. Public hospitals are few in number, and often underfunded and understaffed. According to government data released last year, India has just over 1 million registered doctors and fewer than 15,000 state hospitals for its 1.3 billion people.

In 2014, total spending on healthcare in India averaged 267 US dollars per person, compared to 9,403 US dollars in the US, 3,377 dollars in Britain and 731 dollars in China. Many Indians have no choice but to use private hospitals, where treatment is unaffordable for someone earning the average annual wage of less than 2,000 dollars. That forces many to go deep into debt or sell their valuables and other assets to pay for treatment. 

Professor Shettigar said under the new insurance scheme, major treatments like heart surgery can be covered. He believes that Modicare can benefit lower income groups in India.