'₹50,000 heart surgery becomes ₹2 lakh overnight': Founder says Indian patients funding Americans

India’s hospital bills are starting to resemble five-star hotel receipts—and it’s not by accident. Ashish Singhal, founder of CoinSwitch, has sounded the alarm on LinkedIn, warning that foreign ownership of Indian hospitals is quietly reshaping healthcare into a high-margin, investor-first industry.

“You think you're getting treated in India. You're actually paying US hospital prices,” Singhal wrote in a blunt post reacting to health insurance expert Avigyan Mitra. “Because it's not really an Indian hospital anymore.”

Singhal pointed out that several major hospital chains are now majority-owned by foreign investors: 

“These are businesses focused on profits,” Singhal noted. “Your ₹50,000 heart surgery became ₹2 lakh overnight. Because profit targets went up.”

He cited “revenue optimisation” practices like unnecessary CT scans and extended hospital stays, which pad the bill for patients but serve investor goals. “And guess where those profits go? To investors sitting in Toronto and New York,” he wrote. “The guy in Pune paying ₹20,000/year for health insurance... is literally funding someone else's retirement in Canada.”

Mitra, whose original post sparked the conversation, argued that foreign private equity (PE) funds now control some of India’s most critical private healthcare networks. While this capital has brought improved infrastructure and broader access, Mitra warned it also shifts hospital priorities toward investor returns and away from patient outcomes.

“Hospitals become financial assets first, healing institutions second,” Mitra wrote. “Healthcare is not like tech. You can’t optimize for exit multiples without real-world consequences.”

With India’s healthcare market projected to reach $372 billion by 2027, the concern now is who will own—and benefit from—this growth. “We used to complain about US healthcare being expensive. Now we’re doing the exact same thing,” Singhal concluded.