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The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice on a plea seeking direction to the Central Government to form a committee and scrutinize and audit medical bills and expenses overcharged from Covid-19 patients and their families.

A divisional bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice BV Nagarathna noted, "during the COVID19 situation people were taking recourse to the hospitals, there was widespread of the hapless event by the hospitals of overcharging the patients."

The petition filed by Abhinav Thapar through Advocate Krishna Ballabh Thakur further sought direction to the Central and State Governments to direct the PrivatE Hospitals to refund overcharged amount to covid-19 patients or if the patient is deceased then to their nearby family members.

The plea further stated that “there is no uniform policies and guidelines till date regarding refund of exorbitant amount charged from the patients either at state level or at central level and COVID-19 patients and their families are left at the mercy of private hospitals and they have been exploiting the global pandemic.”

“Central government has closed his eyes towards the suffering of its people despite that there is no uniform guidelines regarding reimbursements from health insurance companies also and they have been paying exorbitant bills to the private hospitals thereby exhausting the health insurance limits of covid-191patients,” the plea added.

Case Title: Abhinav Thapar Vs. Union of India and Ors.