Till it hits home

A close relative of mine suffered brain hemorrhage due to hypertension and was in a critical condition for over three weeks. The experience of managing the whole situation was a revelation on the rising costs of health care in the country and how ill equipped Govt clinics are to attend to critical cases.
To the credit of the government the “108” ambulance service responded on time and admitted the patient to the nearest multi specialty private clinic which saved his life.
The following 3 weeks are a lesson on the rising healthcare costs (clinic, doctor’s consultation and medicines) in this country (for a poor country like India).
I was sitting outside the critical care unit one night and a security guard passed by and commented “ sir you are able to provide good care for this patient, what about a poor man like me, I guess folks like us have to die in such situations”. It was a moving and sad moment.
Understaffed and ill equipped government clinics along are a bane for the citizen, coupled with lack of a serious debate by the central and state governments on the health care needs of the citizens and policies to address it.
If the most advanced nation on , US with such advanced medical care is struggling to put together a bill that addresses the health care needs of its citizen’s India is nowhere in terms of facing the challenge of addressing the health care needs of its citizens.
Various departments of the government give different statistics on the poverty levels of the country, assuming an average of 40-50% of the population that works out to 400-500 Million not having access to good (read Private) health care in the country. I guess Death is the only result for a lot of Indians who do not have access to immediate and necessary medical care in critical conditions.