India, Oct. 2 -- As Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) approaches eight years since its September 2018 launch, it has much to be proud of. About 100,000 people receive free hospital treatment daily, and by June 30, 2026, it had financed 12.69 crore admissions worth '1.92 lakh crore, with better financial protection and earlier access to treatment. Very few public programmes anywhere have expanded healthcare access at this scale and pace. But scale brings its own challenges. Having shown that publicly financed health assurance can expand access, PM-JAY must now ask a harder question: are we always paying for the right care? This is not simply about fraud, which is relatively easy to define: a service not provided, ...