-The Indian Express Responding to specific queries on the issue, Bhupendra Singh, NPPA chairman, told The Indian Express that “examination of hospital records is in process”. AFTER the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) in February ordered a cap on the prices of coronary stents and directed hospitals to issue separate bills specifying their cost, the drug pricing watchdog has started receiving consumer complaints against hospitals which are allegedly hiking the prices...

-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...

-Hindustan Times School textbooks in recent decades have frequently become battlegrounds for ideological contestation in India. Most textbook wars are to advance majoritarian perspectives on history and culture. However, a recent very different textbook skirmish broke out about the public and private sectors in healthcare. The story of this ideological clash is bemusing and instructive, illuminating competing perspectives on the nature of education, healthcare and markets in new India. This clash surfaced...

-Economic and Political Weekly The key to improving the quality of healthcare services in India and reducing costs at the same time can be found by enacting legislation which lays down minimum standards of patient care. In the absence of such standards and the reluctance of health insurance companies to standardise either price or quality, healthcare services continue to be expensive and of doubtful quality. Developing standards of patient care by...

-The Indian Express All emergency cardiology procedures at AIIMS will now be performed free of cost for patients in general wards. Emergency surgeries such as Angioplasty (surgical widening of clogged vessels in the heart using tubes called stents), balloon Angioplasty (insertion of a surgical balloon to open obstructed vessels), opening of blocked heart valves and insertion of pacemakers (battery operated devices to improve heart rates) will now all become free, the hospital...