Parliamentary panel recommends price caps on private hospital treatments

A Parliamentary Standing Committee has recommended price caps and standardised charges for treatments and diagnostics at private hospitals to protect families from high medical bills. It has also proposed Jan Aushadhi Kendras, insurance for the missing middle and expanded public healthcare infrastructure.

Hyderabad: In a push to check the exorbitant and unpredictable medical bills in private corporate hospitals, a high-level Parliamentary Standing Committee has recommended strict price-capping and standardisation of essential treatments, diagnostics, and routine procedures in all private health care facilities.

The high-level committee has come up with the price-capping recommendation to address the growing instances of patients and their families falling into severe economic distress while accessing health care in private hospitals, where treatment costs often run several times higher than public facilities.

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In its 176th report, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, tabled in Parliament just a few days ago, sharply criticised the opaque billing systems and wide disparities plaguing the healthcare sector.

Highlighting data showing that private hospitalisation costs in several states remain heavily burdensome for middle- and lower-income families, the panel felt that there is an urgent need for safeguards like price capping and standardisation of treatments in private hospitals.

The committee has pressed for the immediate formulation of an institutional mechanism to cap costs on routine procedures, specialised treatments, and clinical diagnostics, aiming to eliminate the crippling financial debt commonly associated with private healthcare access.

As a part of ensuring affordability in availability of medicines, the panel has also recommended mandatory establishment of Jan Aushadhi Kendras directly within the premises of all large private hospitals empanelled under government schemes.

The panel in its recommendations also noted that India’s massive boom in medical tourism has exponentially fattened the revenues of large corporate hospital chains, which are often backed by government concessions and foreign direct investment.

The panel recommended a structured cross-subsidisation model wherein institutions profiting from high-net-worth and international patients should be mandated to subsidise tertiary care for economically weaker domestic patients.

The report also calls for targeted health insurance products for the ‘missing middle’, the millions of citizens who do not qualify for state-backed safety nets like AB-PMJAY yet struggle to afford commercial private coverage.

The committee has also focussed on easing infrastructural bottlenecks, noting that spiraling costs are frequently driven by extreme overcrowding at premier central medical institutions. To tackle this challenge, the panel has pushed for the establishment of an additional, independently administered AIIMS facility or a fully equipped satellite center in the northern outskirts of Delhi to decentralise the tertiary healthcare burden. Public health experts point out that expanding such public-tier infrastructure is vital to reducing the sheer volume of patients forced into expensive private networks out of sheer desperation.

Major recommendations:

Capping medical bills, stricter price limits on treatment costs and procedures in all private hospitals to stop overcharging

Affordable medicines in private hospitals by making Jan Aushadhi mandatory in all such facilities

Move aimed to protect ordinary families from falling into financial debt while they access health care in private hospitals

To catch silent killers early, authorities have proposed mandatory biannual kidney checkups for everyone aged 20 and above.

To ease crowding and wait times for patients, new AIIMS facilities/ satellite centers at major hubs