Not In The Pink Of Health

Malpractices in pricing are the bane of India’s healthcare system. Stringent norms and strict enforcement could go a long way towards streamlining it.

- Krishan Kalra

India’s healthcare system is plagued by so many ills that it is difficult to pinpoint just one. The list seems endless: long queues and lack of hygiene at iconic government hospitals, terminally ill patients being turned away by hospitals owing to their lacking money or due to bed shortage, babies being delivered without any proper medical help, fake medicines being circulated, unnecessary diagnostic tests and even surgeries being done, ‘incentives’ given to doctors by diagnostics labs and pharma companies. All these make quality medical care beyond the access of the economically backward—some have to even mortgage their houses to pay for treatment while others just lose their precious lives as they are unable to afford it.

The complexity of any healthcare system can be gauged from a recent statement made by Warren Buffett, whose company has joined hands with Amazon and JPMorgan Chase to ‘disrupt’ healthcare in the US. He likened it to a ‘hungry tapeworm on the American economy’. However, it is no consolation that healthcare is an issue elsewhere too. We need to seriously look into the problem in our country.

Putting in place a ‘universal healthcare’ system for all is not feasible either for the government— because the resources required are humungous— or for the private sector. Even the reach of CSR funds is limited to a few ‘memorial hospitals and institutes,’ which manage to corner prime government land at a cheap cost; and often, their promise of providing a certain number of ‘free beds’ to the poor is hardly met.