NEW DELHI: Around 27 civil society organisations and public health groups on Tuesday wrote a letter to the L-G Anil Baijal and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal over the concern related to hospital rates for Covid-19 treatment in private hospitals.
The order issued on June 20 has categorised charges to be applicable to private hospitals based on beds more and less than 60 per cent of its total capacity. While the bodies welcomed the decision to fix a price cap on private hospitals, they lambasted the limitation of fixed rates on limited percentage of beds, terming it as discriminatory and one that does not meet the objective of providing fair and equitable access to treatment.
“We apprehend that the Order and subsequent Circular are riddled with flaws, contradictions and ambiguities which could be exploited by private hospitals to overcharge people and come in the way of achieving the intent and purpose behind issuing fixed rates in the first place,” read the letter.
The bodies noted that while price capping 60 per cent of total hospital bed capacity, and not for all Covid designated beds is arbitrary and incomprehensible, it also creates inequities in that someone who cannot afford the scheduled charges would be forced to pay a higher cost of treatment only because of unavailability of beds to which price caps apply.
The letter also highlights that the recent circular has not provided the specific number of beds that will be made available in each hospital under each category — isolation, ICU with and without a ventilator.
This, the bodies feel will provide leeway for private hospitals to reserve the more profitable beds, i.e. ICU beds with and without ventilators, to charge patients as per their schedule of charges. The circular according to them, also, fails to account for the 10 per cent beds, that hospitals which have received land at concessional rates, are mandated by law to provide free of cost to EWS patients.