Not just illness, costly medicines kill too

MEDICAL POVERTY: NSSO says four crore people are using huge portions of their income or even borrowing money to meet spiralling medical bills.

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Keywords: health, medicines

New Delhi:

Today, he is struggling to meet his monthly medical bills.

"I spent around Rs 30,000 a month just on my medicines, why cannot the government do anything about this?" he asks.

It's a question the government may have to answer sooner than expected because the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) says four crore people are using huge portions of their income or even borrowing money to meet spiralling medical bills.

For example, in Manipur, 50 per cent of all loans taken are to meet medical costs, followed by 25 per cent in Arunachal Pradesh and 22 per cent in Bihar.

Alarmingly, the lack of money is forcing lakhs of people to skip medical treatment altogether.

The survey says 28 per cent of rural population cannot afford medical treatment, and in urban areas the figure is 20 per cent.

Says health economist, Shaktivel Selvaraj, "The answer to this problem seems to be a universal social health insurance."

But far from setting up a comprehensive social security net, the government has set price controls for only about 20 per cent of all essential drugs and pharma companies are fighting even that move tooth and nail.

"We should be let free like any other industry. Why single out the pharma industry alone?" asks MD Systopic Labs, P K Dutta.

The list of essential medicines has surfaced in government meetings too, only to be put into the pending box.