‘Sizeable segment unable to afford Covid-19 treatment’

The paper on cost and affordability of covid testing and treatment in India by the Public Health Foundation of India and the Duke Global Health Institute in the US is in the pre-print stage.

Using government-capped prices, the study calculated households must have spent over Rs 64,000 crore on testing and hospitalisation from April 2020 to June 2021. It concluded that the direct medical cost of seeking treatment by households is enormous and unsustainable and that a sizeable segment would be unable to afford Covid treatment and service.

According to the study, the cost of hospitalisation in an ICU exceeds the annual income of 86% of casual workers, of over 50% of the salaried and of two-thirds of those who are self-employed. Even the cost of just isolation in a hospital exceeds the annual income of over 43% of casual workers, a quarter of the self-employed and 15% of the salaried.

Even an estimate of Rs 2,200 for an RT-PCR test in the private sector would amount to a week’s earnings for a casual worker. More than one test has to be done during the course of the illness and others in the family too have to undergo testing, which would place a huge burden on the family.

“We have calculated the cost by taking an average of the capped prices announced by the various state governments. But these capped prices have several exclusions. So, the actual cost could be much higher than the estimate,” said Sakthivel Selvaraj, the lead author of the study. Not only did most price caps have several exclusions, most were flouted and/or bypassed. “The estimates focused on direct financial costs of Covid-19 care, the larger costs to individuals and the health care system were not considered. Even other additional direct costs such as transport cost, payment made to funeral expenses, etc are unaccounted for,” stated the paper.