Medical and non-medical cost of hypertension and heart diseases in India

Cardiovascular diseases are a major public health challenge in India with the emergence of disease burden of non-communicable diseases equivalent to that of communicable diseases. Long-term diseases entail large out-of-pocket expenditure too. There is also a dearth of studies regarding recent estimates of expenditures on treatment of people suffering from chronic conditions. The present paper focuses on the medical and non-medical expenditure associated with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension and coronary heart disease) in India. The Indian Human Development Survey (2011–12) data has been used. The sample size of hypertension and coronary heart diseases (15 and above years) are 6,015 (4.3%) and 1,509 (1.1%) from a total sample size of 147,201. ANOVA test has been applied to check the significance of differences in means. The number of hypertensive and CHD-affected adults preferring private providers for seeking treatment is three times the number of those preferring government providers. CHD-affected adults preferring private providers have been found to spend Rs. 4,000 more as average expenditure as compared to government providers. Inspite of the country’s health programs’ endeavour to provide public institutional care for cardio-vascular diseases available universally, the findings show otherwise and put the glaring differences in medical and non-medical expenditure in sharp perspective. Subjects: Mathematics & Statistics; Development Studies; Health and Social Care