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July 28,2021

Anna Murray 

The plight of thousands of Indian families affected by India's devastating second COVID wave has been exacerbated by crippling medical debt. Crowdfunding has quickly emerged as a viable alternative to health insurance and government assistance for many people who have turned to it to help pay for their hospital bills. According to the most recent news, three of the largest crowdfunding sites, Ketto, Milaap, and Give India, have raised approximately US$161 million so far during the COVID crisis with the help of 2.7 million donors.

Healthcare access in India was a problem even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Indians pay approximately 63% of their medical expenses out of pocket. According to a 2018 study published in the British Medical Journal and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), out-of-pocket healthcare costs drove 38 million people into poverty in 2011-2012.That is typical of many underdeveloped nations with insufficient government services. Then, in 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a health insurance scheme that was intended to cover approximately 500 million of India's 1.3 billion people, and it was a significant step toward lowering medical costs. It does not, however, cover primary care and outpatient costs, which account for the vast majority of out-of-pocket expenses. As a result, access to care and financial risk protection has not improved significantly.

Anil Sharma's case is typical of India's COVID crisis. In May, as India's new Covid-19 cases surpassed 400,000 per day, Anil Sharma spent his savings on his 24-year-old son Saurav's care at a private hospital in northwest New Delhi, paying for an ambulance, tests, medicines, and an ICU bed. He then obtained bank loans. As the bills piled up, he borrowed from friends and family. Then he turned to strangers for help, pleading for assistance on Ketto, an Indian crowdfunding website. Sharma claims to have paid US$54,000 in medical bills in total. He, on the other hand, received US$28,000 through the crowdfunding platform.

There is no data on how many more people were driven into bankruptcy by medical debt during the COVID pandemic, but a preliminary study by the Duke Global Health Institute and the PHFI estimates that two-thirds of India's self-employed and half of its salaried workforce could not afford critical care. As a result, crowdfunding has quickly emerged as a viable alternative to health insurance and government assistance, and it is being used by Indians to pay their high medical bills.