Responding to growing anger over the high cost of Covid treatment, most states have capped Covid treatment charges. Yet, more than 80% of families would be financially crippled by a single member undergoing Covid treatment. That’s because even at the capped charges, bills for even ten days of treatment work out to several times their monthly expenditure, an analysis of the charges and official data on monthly expenditures shows.
For instance, according to the latest household expenditure report of 2017-18 put out by the National Statistical Office, in Delhi, which has among the highest monthly per capita expenditures in the country, for 80% of the population monthly spend per person is below Rs 5,000 or Rs 25,000 for a family of five. The lowest priced isolation bed in a non-accredited hospital in the Capital would cost Rs 80,000 for ten days of treatment, more than three times the monthly spending of 80% of the population. For a patient with severe Covid in ICU care with ventilator support, the bill could be several lakh as the treatment could stretch for two to three weeks or more.
TOI put together the capped prices for isolation beds, ICU beds without ventilator and those with ventilator in 20 states and compared the cost of ten days’ treatment with the latest report on monthly per capita expenditure in each state. It shows that even with price caps, the treatment is unaffordable for 80% of the population. In all states, the treatment is free of cost in government hospitals. However, even in non-Covid times, the government share of inpatients in the country is at best about 42%. With reports of poor conditions in governments hospitals running to full capacity and wide publicity regarding bureaucrats and politicians choosing private hospitals for Covid treatment, there was a greater clamour for beds in private hospitals.
Source: Times of India
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