New Delhi: The Supreme Court has modified its interim order of April 8, in which it had made it imperative for private laboratories to test for COVID-19 free of cost. Free testing in private labs is now limited largely to those that the government recognises as economically weaker.
Testing was being done for free at government laboratories. However, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had capped charges for testing at Rs 4,500, when it came to private hospitals or labs. This, the petitioner, advocate Shashank Deo Sudhi, said was not “within means of a large part of population of this country.”
On Monday, April 13, a bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and S. Ravindra Bhat passed a modified order in an application filed by Dr. Kaushal Kant, who LiveLaw has reported, said that direction for free testing will affect the functioning of private labs.
The Supreme Court said that free testing would be available only to persons eligible under the Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme and to those belonging to any other government-notified category of economically weaker sections of the society.
Also read: How the Supreme Court’s Order on Free COVID-19 Testing Can Be Implemented
LiveLaw has reported that the apex court said private labs can continue “to charge the payment for testing of COVID-19 from persons who are able to make payment of testing fee as fixed by ICMR.”
It left it to the Centre and the health ministry to decide on guidelines for cost reimbursement for free testing to the above two groups of people by private labs. On April 8, the Supreme Court had said, that the question of whether private laboratories should be entitled for any reimbursement of expenses incurred “shall be considered at a later time.”
The Supreme Court’s interim order had met with debate. In her analysis for The Wire, Pradnya Talekar had said that the criticism of it centred not only around the questions of “the competence of the courts to pass such orders mandating philanthropy on few private players, but also its possible counter-productive impact of demotivating private players from undertaking testing, owing to uncertainty regarding reimbursement of testing charges.”
The apex court has also asked the Centre to decide whether testing should be made free of cost for any other categories of the weaker sections.
Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who had appeared for several laboratories, according to LiveLaw, had contended that about 50 crore beneficiaries of the Ayushman scheme were already being benefitted by free testing and that the ICMR’s cap is an effort to recover some of the costs associated with handling the crisis.