The authorities in Delhi have moved to stop profiteering by private hospitals that are charging about £265 a day and crippling advance payments to accept a coronavirus patient. Officials have imposed a price cap of 10,000 rupees (£106) per day for a place in an isolation ward or £160 for an intensive care bed with no ventilator. Delhi is among the worst affected areas in India.
Most beds for coronavirus patients are in government hospitals where treatment is subsidised but wealthier people shun them because of their poor reputation. They go to private hospitals but only if they are lucky enough to find an available bed and a deposit, which ranges from £1,000 to £20,000 paid in advance. Surjit Khanna said that he had to give a hospital more than £5,000 before it would admit his mother. “We were running around begging relatives and friends and visiting ATMs to clean out all our accounts,” he said.
His mother recovered, but Khanna was left with a bill of £16,000. “£1,600 was charged just for PPE kits,” he said. “It was naked extortion. They made the most of the opportunity to fleece us since we were sitting ducks.” Private hospitals say that patients are informed of the cost at every stage, but some of their own doctors have expressed outrage. “The average family will go bankrupt paying for just a week’s treatment. My own family wouldn’t be able to afford such bills,” a doctor at one of the hospitals said.
