By offering services to 50 crore (500 million) people it is the world's largest government sponsored healthcare program.

[10] A large percentage of the population is left underserved by the Indian health system, which relies on out-of-pocket payments from patients to fund care.

The Indian government first announced the Ayushman Bharat Yojana as a universal health care plan in February 2018 in the 2018 Union budget of India.

In his 2018 Independence Day speech Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India would have a major national health program later that year on 25 September, also commemorating the birthday of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya.

[17][18] Features of PM-JAY include the following— providing health coverage to 10 crores households or 50 crores Indians;[19] providing a cover of ₹5 lakh (equivalent to ₹5.6 lakh or US$6,500 in 2023) per family per year for medical treatment in empaneled hospitals, both public and private; offering cashless payment and paperless recordkeeping through the hospital or doctor's office;[20] using criteria from the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 to determine eligibility for benefits;[21][22] no restriction on family size, age or gender; all pre-existing medical conditions are covered under the scheme; it covers 3 days of pre-hospitalisation and 15 days of post-hospitalisation, including diagnostic care and expenses on medicines; the scheme is portable and a beneficiary can avail medical treatment at any PM-JAY empanelled hospital outside their state and anywhere in the country;[23] providing access to free COVID-19 testing.

[29][30] India's 28 states and 8 union territories each make their own choice about whether to participate in Ayushman Bharat Yojana.

[32][33] Those programs, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Jan Arogya Yojana and the programme for Tamil Nadu, were already functioning well.

These states later both joined Ayushman Bharat Yojana with special exceptions to make it part of their existing infrastructure.

[33] In a similar way, Kerala, despite having its own health program agreed to begin using Ayushman Bharat Yojana from November 2019.

[34][35] West Bengal initially joined the program but then opted out in favor of establishing their own regional health programme.

[39] In May 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his radio show Mann Ki Baat that the Ayushman Bharat scheme had recently benefited more than one crore people.

[46] While Ayushman Bharat Yojana seeks to provide excellent healthcare, India still has some basic healthcare challenges including relatively few doctors, more cases of infectious disease, and a national budget with a comparatively low central government investment in health care.

Despite all efforts to curb foul-play, the risk of unscrupulous private entities profiteering from gaming the system is clearly present in PM-JAY.