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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Heart care costs beat cover: Study

Heart care costs beat cover: Study

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published Published on Feb 19, 2016   modified Modified on Feb 19, 2016
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: One in five patients in India treated for heart attacks had to pay over a third of their annual household income from their pockets despite health insurance, according to a study that doctors say highlights poor health care protection.

The study probing the financial impacts of serious acute coronary events in a sample of 1,635 patients from 41 hospitals across the country has also found that 60 per cent of patients without health insurance suffered similar so-called catastrophic expenditure on treatment.

The findings are part of a seven-country study across Asia to determine how standard treatment - such as drug therapy to dissolve clots and angioplasty with stent insertions for heart attacks and other acute coronary events - affected households with and without health insurance.

"We found a significant proportion of patients had health insurance protection, but even among those covered by insurance, many had to pay from their own pockets because their bills exceeded the amounts paid by insurance companies," said Jitendra Sawhney, head of cardiology at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and the principal investigator for the study in India.

The doctors found that the average out-of-pocket costs incurred in India by the patients' families for the treatment was about Rs 1,40,000.

While over half the sample of patients from India had health insurance, about 20 per cent of even insured patients experienced catastrophic health care expenditures - defined as more than 30 per cent of the annual household income - because of the treatment.

The study, just published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, found that the households of about 60 per cent of patients without health coverage suffered catastrophic expenditures even when the treatment was fully subsidised by the government either through hospitals or programmes.

Sawhney and his colleagues found, as anticipated, that the out-of-pocket costs were significantly higher in countries without adequate health protection - China, India, and Vietnam - than in South Korea, Singapore and Thailand whose governments offer universal health coverage.

A panel of health experts had over three years ago recommended that India should introduce universal health coverage for a wide range of illnesses, including cardiovascular diseases, using tax revenues rather than health insurance. But the plan has not been implemented yet.

Sawhney said that while the sample of patients selected for the study was too small to represent a country the size of India, the study's results appear to highlight lingering concerns about inadequate government spending on health and inadequate health insurance protection.

An official with a public sector insurance company said awareness about the high costs of medical treatment has grown in recent years. "We recommend a minimum health insurance cover of Rs 3 lakh per person," the official told The Telegraph. "How much cover families actually take depends on the number of members in the household, their age and the premium they can afford."

The study found that China had the highest proportion of catastrophic health expenditure - 80 per cent among patients without insurance, and 56 per cent among patients with insurance. Not a single patient among the 41 selected in Malaysia had to bear catastrophic expenses.

The Telegraph, 18 February, 2016, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160219/jsp/nation/story_70191.jsp#.VsbZD-Y1t_k


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