UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE IN PERSPECTIVE: A PRAGMATIC WAY FORWARD

The ills of healthcare facing India largely stem from the glaring disparity in the accessibility and affordability of healthcare for different sections of the society.

- B. S. AJAIKUMAR

The government schemes fall dismally short of compensating the cost of the needful drugs and quality treatment which invariably exceed the subsidy and insurance extended. Given the low levels of reimbursement, quality of care and cure is ruthlessly compromised, and the poor have to contend with substandard procedures in most cases. They are tragically shortchanged in the critical area of health which, at times, marks the difference between life and death.

Not only are the treatment outcomes far from desirable, the government has no mechanism in place to measure them. If the government starts measuring key outcomes of subsidised treatments vis-à-vis standard treatment, say of patients with breast or head and neck cancer, they will know the effectiveness, or the lack of it, of their healthcare schemes, which are always high on intent, but low in terms of outcomes. Once the government compares these outcomes with those of patients from the affluent sections of the society, it will automatically sense what I call 'the cost of low cost', poor outcomes of subsidised treatments which prove self-defeating.