Is Low Healthcare spending a deliberate method for population control
It is insignificant to us healthcare workers that which Government is in power. Healthcare is at the bottom of priorities of each one of them and this is reflected in the healthcare spending year after year where India is currently ranked a shameful 180th in the world. In fact the current regime thought it fit to slash the sanctioned already meager budget by further 25 %. I have been perplexed at this constant and deliberate neglect specially when you see "healthcare spending cut" being an issue enough to topple Governments in UK and other developed countries.
It is not as if we did not have good intelligent people in the successive Governments who did not understand the importance of healthcare spending for the nation. Maybe just maybe it is a deliberate policy whereby poor healthcare spending translates into poor health of nation hence the increased mortality keeping the population in check. India has failed other methods of population control and maybe has hit on this as the most politically prudent way. If it is so it is a callous inhuman policy of a nation which is an aspiring superpower and which is among the top buyers of arms, weapons and munitions in the world. Our priorities are skewed and we continue to pay for this disparity with friction within our social fabric.
It is the state's responsibility to provide healthcare to its citizens. Since that cannot be done in the meager funds allocated it is easy blame and make private doctors responsible. How easy it is to ask its doctor citizens who have not received any Government job, educational loan or incentive to set up private enterprise to see patients free of cost on 9th of every month. This and other similar gimmicks are used to cover for government failures to provide healthcare to its citizens.
Honourable Prime Minister sir , I am willing to provide service free on 9th of every month if each and every member of the society including its engineers, politicians, bureaucrats, judiciary, business houses, stock market traders, karyana shop owner, jeweller, agriculturist, architect , advocate and property dealer donate the income of that one day (9th) towards a heathcare cess. But then that is impossible because the local karyana shop owner though maybe earning 10 times the local nursing home owner, cannot be asked even to pay income tax for fear of political backlash. How then can he be asked for the "9th of month cess" when he cannot be asked to pay income tax.
If population control is our aim and increased mortality our achievement for which Government needs to be applauded then keeping the health budget low is agreeable. But then atleast have the guts to say so aloud. Do not then hide behind the skirt of private healthcare establishments and pitifully few underpaid qualified doctors in Government service blaming them for every fault in the system which is of your own creation.
Dr Neeraj Nagpal
Convenor,Medicos Legal Action Group, Managing Director MLAG Indemnity,
Ex President IMA Chandigarh
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