90% poorest have no health insurance, reel under high medical costs: Report

Only about 10% of the poorest one-fifth of Indians in rural (10.2%) and urban India (9.8%) had any form of private or government health insurance, show data from India’s largest national survey on social consumption, conducted between July 2017 and June 2018.

The poor are routinely forced to dip into their savings, borrow, delay treatment or receive poor quality care, experts said.

Overall, few Indians--14.1% in rural areas and 19.1% in urban areas--had any form of health coverage, found the report by the National Survey Office (NSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and