It is a big relief to Covid patients who need to urgently approach private hospitals or who have not found a place in the government hospital. To date, the number of Covid Patients in India is 29,510,410 which is more than the population of some European countries. Out of the aforesaid figure, nearly 374,305 people have died to date.
And Health professionals have welcomed the decision of the government — Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has deleted GST on medical items of Covid-19 till Sep30 of this year. The medical items include medication and equipment. Experts believe that this is a big relief to the patient and their kins in reducing the burden of medical bills in private hospitals.
Although health experts in Government hospitals are claiming that the government machinery is already providing relief to patients. RIMS professor Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya said
“We have been providing all kinds of drugs and life-saving equipment to our patients for free, so the Union government’s decision will not affect us. Having said that the exemption of GST on a few drugs like Amphotericin-B and Tocilizumab will make those medicines easily available to the retailers as they are no longer required to face the GST hassle before procuring and selling them.”
However, Patients admitted in the private hospitals (or their attendants) commented that the aforesaid cut in GST has provided them with a big relief. Nitish Kumar a Jamshedpur resident said “One of my family members was admitted to a leading private hospital in Ranchi after developing black fungus infection and we were paying around Rs 25,000-Rs30,0000 daily. The reduction in taxes will surely help us in reducing our bills as the medicines and equipment used will become cheaper. I would request the government to extend the relief till the end of pandemic and not just for three months.”
