It's official: India's private hospitals cost an arm and a leg

 09-Jul-15, Tatkal News

For the first time, you can now put a number to what everybody has known - that private hospitalization is prohibitively costly. On an average, hospital admission is more than three times as expensive in a private hospital as in a government facility.

In some cases, like eye diseases, private hospitals can cost up to 6.5 times more than government ones, and for an obstetrics or neo natal case, seven times. Childbirth costs eight-and-a-half times more in private hospitals compared to government ones. These findings are part of the latest survey report put out by the National Sample Survey Organization.

Image: Live Mint

“Private hospitalization costs have been increasing continuously. The only reason people go to private hospitals is because government hospitals are so few and under so much pressure,“ says Amit Sengupta of the People's Health Movement.

In rural areas, about 58% of all hospitalization cases go to private facilities. This is up from about 56% in 1995-96. In urban areas, only 68% cases go to private hospitals, up from 57% twenty years ago, the report says.

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