New Delhi, April 21 -- Hospitalisation has become more privatised and expensive in India between 2017-18 and 2025 even as more Indians are being covered by government-sponsored health insurance programmes, government data released on Monday showed. An average non-childbirth hospitalisation in India required an out-of-pocket (OOP) spending of Rs.34,604 in 2025. This number, about 1.64 times an average Indian household's monthly spending in 2023-24, underlines the potential economic shock that a family could face from an emergency health spend. These numbers are from the report on Household Social Consumption: Health, released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) on Monday, which is based on a survey of 139,732 households in the calendar ...