Written by: Rushav Paneru - 28018, Grade VIII
Posted on: 24 August, 2023
Health is the most precious thing in human life. If we or anyone from our family falls seriously ill, we are always ready to spend a ton of money at hospitals to see them recover. There are cheap and affordable government hospitals in Nepal. But, due to the scarcity of facilitated, sound, and well-managed treatment, we tend to keep the sick person in private hospitals. As A Result of this, in city areas private hospitals established a good stand for themselves. Even though there is quality treatment and good overall treatment in private hospitals, they charge way more than they should. These types of complaints have been coming to light these days.
It is a common narrative that private hospitals follow many bad practices to cost-cutting and earn more profit. A good example of this is the incident where DoSM(The Department of Supply Management), closed down 57 hospitals and pharmacies because they did not have medical licences and overcharged their patients 35% more than the profit margin set by the government. Hospitals were taking huge amounts of money from the patients with the title“Service Charge '' and 13% VAT (Value Added Tax). Similarly, this whole market of Private Hospitals had earned more than 2 Trillion Nrs just by adding a huge sum of money under “Service charge”.
Many hospitals were charging huge amounts in the name of “Service Charges''. Some hospitals were charging 6 Lakh Nrs to people for minor surgeries in the name of “Service Charge”. But what can poor people do? Treatment is necessary to survive the injury or disease so the poor have to pay the money that they don't have by taking loans from many people. This kind of story happened to a person. He had to pay 12 lakhs for the treatment of his wife just in the Name of a “Service Charge ''. The total bill was 17 lakhs. And there was the added cost of surgery. He committed suicide by falling from the roof of that hospital. I mean it’s his fault also that he could not earn well. That’s a different thing. But, like 12 lakhs for the name “service charge”? Well, some hospitals are there that are actually providing quality treatment with good and reasonable prices and good doctors. Hats off to their work. But, these fraudsters? They scam people kamikaze style. Like who adds literally 12 lakhs, that’s 12,00,000 just in “Service Charge”!
Most Private hospitals are fraudsters and the government hospital has their problem. We should have a serious talk with private hospitals about this. This overcharging has to go away and all hospitals should provide reasonable healthcare to their patients. Many people have been in this situation where they have to pay huge amounts of money for service charges and end up committing suicide. That’s pretty bad. The ultimate solution is to provide quality treatment at a lower price compared to now and also reduce healthcare tax. The government should work on health service maladies.
