Medical bills have pushed 55 million Indians into poverty, within a year

A study was published, by three experts, from the Public Health Foundation of India which has estimated that around 55 million Indians were pushed into poverty, in a single year, because of having to fund their own healthcare and that 38 million of them fell below the poverty line, due to spending on medicines alone.

Another study, published in the British Medical Journal revealed that the non-communicable diseases like cancer, heart diseases and diseases account for the largest chunk of spending in healthcare by households.Health expenditure is generally considered to be catastrophic for a household, if it constitutes as more than 10 percent of the general expenditure by the household.

The government has brought down the prices of the medicine in an effort to combat this problem by opening Jan Aushadhi stores to supply medicine, which is cheap, but the stores are plagued with frequent stockouts and quality issues.

The increase of healthcare expenditure can be contributed to most patients soughting out outpatient care, in the more expensive private sector.