Study reveals devastating financial burden on heart failure patients in India

Heart failure has become one of the nation’s most financially devastating illnesses, pushing families into catastrophic health spending, debt, and distress financing. Only one in three patients with heart failure had any health insurance cover.

Even with health insurance cover, the out-of-pocket expenditure on heart failure management was immense as chronic disease progression demanded frequent hospital visits and long-term medication, none of which were covered by any existing health insurance schemes, according to a multi-centric study across 21 institutions to assess the economic impact of heart failure at the individual and household levels.