Every single day in India, 2,000 to 2,500 people lose their lives to cancer. While the numbers themselves are alarming, an even darker reality is emerging beneath the surface—cancer care is rapidly transforming from a public health challenge into a profit-driven business model.
Recent reports and hospital revenue data reveal that cancer treatment has now become the top revenue earner for major urban hospitals, overtaking traditional high-income departments like cardiology. Expensive diagnostic tests, repeated scans, long chemotherapy cycles, radiation sessions, immunotherapy doses, and targeted drugs have turned cancer care into a packaged, high-margin service.
In cities, hospitals are aggressively expanding oncology wings, installing advanced PET scanners, linear accelerators, robotic surgery units, and specialised cancer wards—not merely to meet demand, but because oncology guarantees sustained revenue. A single patient’s treatment can stretch from ₹62,000 to over ₹6 lakh for early-stage cancer, and run into tens of lakhs for advanced therapies.
Health experts warn that the system increasingly rewards prolonged treatment rather than prevention or early intervention. Where once medical decisions were guided purely by clinical need, critics argue that today protocols often resemble billing structures.
“The tragedy is not just that cancer is rising,” says a senior public health analyst, “but that compassion is shrinking while commercialisation is growing.”
India diagnoses nearly 14 lakh new cancer cases every year, and close to 9 lakh patients die annually. Yet public investment in cancer prevention, early screening, and affordable treatment remains limited. While government schemes like Ayushman Bharat provide coverage up to ₹5 lakh, patients frequently report gaps—forcing them into private hospitals where costs escalate rapidly.
The ethical dilemma is stark:
Is the healthcare system truly designed to reduce cancer, or has it quietly adapted to profit from its growth?
Unless transparency, regulation, and patient-first accountability are enforced, experts fear cancer will no longer be remembered only as a deadly disease—but as one of the greatest systemic failures of modern healthcare.
