Every time a doctor sends you for a blood test or a scan, there may be a silent transaction happening — one that has nothing to do with your diagnosis and everything to do with who gets a cut. AAP Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha raised this uncomfortable reality on the floor of Parliament on Thursday, August 6, 2026, calling out the 'cut money' arrangements between private doctors and diagnostic centres that quietly inflate patient bills across India.

The Referral Commission Racket — How It Works

The mechanics, as Chadha laid them out, are straightforward and damning. Diagnostic centres book the payments as 'marketing expenses.' Doctors pocket them as 'referral commissions.' The patient never sees this line item — but they pay it, buried inside their hospital bill. 'A silent transaction that isn't about your treatment,' Chadha said. 'It's about who referred you.' This is not a new problem. The Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 explicitly banned doctors from accepting any commission, gift, or kickback for referring patients to laboratories or diagnostic facilities. Yet the practice has persisted for over two decades, shape-shifting into euphemisms that make it harder to prosecute and easier to ignore.

A Prohibition That Exists on Paper

The National Medical Commission (NMC), which now governs medical ethics in India, is the body empowered to enforce these prohibitions and take action against errant practitioners. Parliamentary interventions like Chadha's serve a pointed purpose: they create a public record, pressure regulators to act, and force the issue onto the agenda of health ministries that might otherwise let enforcement slide. The broader pattern is well-documented. State-level health inquiries and parliamentary discussions have repeatedly flagged how commercialisation in the private diagnostic sector drives unnecessary tests and inflated billing — costs borne entirely by patients who trust that the tests they are being sent for are medically necessary. AAP has consistently used such parliamentary moments to contrast the problem with its own model of free diagnostics under schemes like Mohalla Clinics in Delhi and expanded public lab access in Punjab.

What Patients Need to Know Before Their Next Test

The practical implication is sharp: if your doctor refers you to a specific diagnostic centre rather than leaving the choice to you, it is worth asking why. Patients are legally entitled to seek tests at any accredited facility. No ethical obligation — and no medical guideline — requires you to use the centre your doctor names. Chadha's video of the parliamentary speech, shared directly with his followers, is a rare instance of a regulatory issue being explained in plain language to the people it affects most. Whether the NMC or the Union Health Ministry responds with enforcement action is the question Parliament has now put on the table — and the one patients will be watching.