With their gleaming facades, five-star lobbies and rockstar doctors, big private hospitals are now a fact of life in India’s urban landscapes. Well-heeled middle-class patients and those with enough insurance now rush to them, hoping for world-class treatment but sure that either way it will cost them a bomb. “The choice is limited and the costs of care in the private hospitals are going up,” says Alok Mukhopadhyay of Voluntary Health Association of India.