India
Development finance institutions funding hospitals that fleece patients: Oxfam study | India News
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A recent report examining the money invested in the health sector by development finance institutions of the UK, France, Germany, the EU and the World Bank Group found that most of the investments were in for-profit private healthcare providers in developing countries that were impoverishing patients.
According to the report titled Sick Development brought out by Oxfam, 69% of the total number of investments (not the total value in US$) made in the health sector by these development finance institutions (DFIs), mostly in the form of equity, went to private health companies operating in lower-middle-income countries with many private hospital groups in India getting a huge chunk of this. Just 7% went to low-income countries. Of the 140 financial intermediaries used by the European DFIs to invest in health, 80% are domiciled in tax havens, primarily Mauritius and the Cayman Islands.
DFIs are wholly or majority government-owned, multilateral agencies tasked with funding private sector development in the Global South. They are backed by taxpayers’ money and guarantees. The five DFIs assessed in this report have a mandate to help deliver the Sustainable Development Goals, reduce poverty and support inclusive growth, noted the report. The report, which tried to assess whether DFIs’ promise to advance universal health coverage (UHC) was being kept and whether obligations to protect rights were being upheld, found that “clearly they are not”.
The report found that since 2010 the four DFIs have invested at least $2.4bn in health, both directly and indirectly via health-specific financial intermediaries. At least 81% of the European DFI health investments that Oxfam identified were made indirectly via a complex, unaccountable and often invisible web of tax-avoiding FIs, mostly private equity funds. Of the 358 investments that Oxfam examined, 56% (202) were in private hospitals or other for-profit healthcare provider companies, while 32% (114) were in R&D companies. About 2-3% each was invested in health insurance, information systems and PPPs (mostly hospitals).
Patients of two private hospital chains in India funded by these DFIs told Oxfam that they were blocked from using their government health insurance cards, and suffered financial hardship due to bills that they should not have been charged. However, these hospital chains denied that their hospitals rejected government health insurance cards. Fees charged to patients who sought care at these hospitals ranged from between three-and-a-half months’ to 14 years’ worth of wages for an average earner in India, according to the report. India’s private healthcare sector is currently worth around $236 billion, thanks in part to investments from the World Bank’s IFC, stated the report.
The people benefitting from such investment “include the private equity firms, notorious for siphoning wealth out of social sectors and driving down working conditions and care standards, with women paying the greatest price”. Winners also include the millionaire and billionaire owners of DFI-supported corporate hospital chains, stated the report.
Anna Marriott, Oxfam International’s health policy lead was quoted stating that massive infusions of public funds into private hospitals and other healthcare corporations in developing nations “has proved to be an evidence-free, rich country bankers’ guide to global healthcare—a free-for-all of private greed over public good—where the big winners are the super-rich investors and owners of healthcare corporations, and the losers being the masses facing rising poverty, sickness, discrimination, and human rights abuses.”
“Taxpayers’ money is being used to back expensive, for-profit private hospitals in the Global South that block, bankrupt or even detain patients who cannot pay – and all this with funds mandated to fight such approaches which would likely be deeply unpopular in European nations.
According to the report titled Sick Development brought out by Oxfam, 69% of the total number of investments (not the total value in US$) made in the health sector by these development finance institutions (DFIs), mostly in the form of equity, went to private health companies operating in lower-middle-income countries with many private hospital groups in India getting a huge chunk of this. Just 7% went to low-income countries. Of the 140 financial intermediaries used by the European DFIs to invest in health, 80% are domiciled in tax havens, primarily Mauritius and the Cayman Islands.
DFIs are wholly or majority government-owned, multilateral agencies tasked with funding private sector development in the Global South. They are backed by taxpayers’ money and guarantees. The five DFIs assessed in this report have a mandate to help deliver the Sustainable Development Goals, reduce poverty and support inclusive growth, noted the report. The report, which tried to assess whether DFIs’ promise to advance universal health coverage (UHC) was being kept and whether obligations to protect rights were being upheld, found that “clearly they are not”.
The report found that since 2010 the four DFIs have invested at least $2.4bn in health, both directly and indirectly via health-specific financial intermediaries. At least 81% of the European DFI health investments that Oxfam identified were made indirectly via a complex, unaccountable and often invisible web of tax-avoiding FIs, mostly private equity funds. Of the 358 investments that Oxfam examined, 56% (202) were in private hospitals or other for-profit healthcare provider companies, while 32% (114) were in R&D companies. About 2-3% each was invested in health insurance, information systems and PPPs (mostly hospitals).
Patients of two private hospital chains in India funded by these DFIs told Oxfam that they were blocked from using their government health insurance cards, and suffered financial hardship due to bills that they should not have been charged. However, these hospital chains denied that their hospitals rejected government health insurance cards. Fees charged to patients who sought care at these hospitals ranged from between three-and-a-half months’ to 14 years’ worth of wages for an average earner in India, according to the report. India’s private healthcare sector is currently worth around $236 billion, thanks in part to investments from the World Bank’s IFC, stated the report.
The people benefitting from such investment “include the private equity firms, notorious for siphoning wealth out of social sectors and driving down working conditions and care standards, with women paying the greatest price”. Winners also include the millionaire and billionaire owners of DFI-supported corporate hospital chains, stated the report.
Anna Marriott, Oxfam International’s health policy lead was quoted stating that massive infusions of public funds into private hospitals and other healthcare corporations in developing nations “has proved to be an evidence-free, rich country bankers’ guide to global healthcare—a free-for-all of private greed over public good—where the big winners are the super-rich investors and owners of healthcare corporations, and the losers being the masses facing rising poverty, sickness, discrimination, and human rights abuses.”
“Taxpayers’ money is being used to back expensive, for-profit private hospitals in the Global South that block, bankrupt or even detain patients who cannot pay – and all this with funds mandated to fight such approaches which would likely be deeply unpopular in European nations.
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