High Out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) on healthcare pushes the population, especially the marginalised ones, to a more vulnerable state, economically, socially, physically and emotionally. The government’s role in terms of reinstating a fair situation in the healthcare market is thus widely sought. In 2005, the World Health Organisation (WHO) came up with the agenda of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), which advocates for an increasing role of the government in the health sector through greater public investment. Since then, member countries have embarked on different trajectories to ensure the increasing role of the government in the health sector. With the acceptance of New Public Management (NPM) ideas in the public sector under the UHC regime, several countries have prioritised purchasing care rather than providing it. Subsequently, quite conspicuously, the concept of “Strategic Purchasing” was elucidated in the National Health Policy of India in 2017. Over the last two decades, both the Union and state governments have launched several government funded health insurance (GFHI) schemes Either in the form of insurance premiums or through direct payment to providers, governments sponsor access to high-cost, low-frequency hospitalisation care, particularly in the private sector. The stated objective is to provide free care and bring down financial hardships faced by households engaged in the informal sector, particularly those below the poverty line (BPL) or those who are socio-economically disadvantaged. In this article, we attempt to compare the OOPE while seeking hospitalisaiton services to understand whether the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), along with other state government sponsored GFHI schemes, was able to bring a certain level of respite to the beneficiaries by lowering the OOP expenditure. We use descriptive statistics from the latest available NSS Health and Social Consumption data (80th round) and the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey of 2023-24 to study the effectiveness of these schemes in ensuring financial protection. The following section discusses a brief history of GFHIs and current coverage of the schemes. Section three deals with OOPE on health; section four is on the catastrophic expenditure of households; and we end with a discussion in section five.