Question Of Healthcare In India: Government Funded? Insurance Funded? Patient-pays?
Modern Healthcare is a creation of man. It was not, is not, just existing in nature, nor it has naturally developed. It is an artificial construct, against nature in fact, created by men driven by need for money, and also by the wish to alleviate the suffering of the sick. Therefore it has costs.
So now that it is there, do we become entitled to it without having to pay for its cost? If we are not able to pay for it, though it is available, does its denial for that reason constitutes injustice against us, cruelty to us?
Thinking that government is omnipotent, and with endless money, is replacing God with government. It is replacing stone idols with a new idol called government. It is governmento-latory, the government worship.
In fact it is more than that. Man never associated God with powers which we now associate with government. Though man did demand miracles from God, he always told himself that if he doesn't work, he won't be fed by God.
So government doesn't have endless money. It has money limited by taxes, which are limited by the productivity of the men it governs. That limited money can be spent on many different things: on military, on courts and police, on roads, on common services like waste disposal, water supply, fire services, hospitals, etc.
So, we already have government hospitals. They are not able to cope because government doesn't have money to finance more hospitals. The gap is filled by private hospitals which directly recover the cost from the patients, and therefore the patients think that government must either have more hospitals, or pay the bills of the private hospitals.
First, if government is to have more hospitals of its own, it would need to increase taxes astronomically. That is, it would need to collectivise our incomes to pay for the Healthcare of us all. Collectivisation of incomes(Socialism/Communism), has been tried in many countries, and has only led to the death of over 10 crore human beings, extreme poverty, misery, and almost permanent destruction of work ethos, character, and social compact in countries concerned. In contrast, modern Healthcare, without government funding, has increased our life from 25 years to 70 years on average. In any case, more government hospitals will be only more, not better than the present government hospitals. Innovations will stop, further development in medicine will stop. There will be rationing, waiting lists, with queue jumping quotas for politicians, judges, bureaucrats, and their cronies. There will be blackmarket, corruption, thievery, degradation of society as a whole. And there will be little money left to spend on military, on courts and police, on education, on roads, on common services like waste disposal, water supply, fire services, etc.
Another alternative will be the government paying whole or part of the cost in private hospitals, directly or through insurance companies. That will mean fake bills, fake treatment, inflated costs, and jacked up prices. We would then never know what a procedure should cost, because once government Chacha is there to pay, the hospital would extract whatever it can. Again, the result will be corruption, thievery, degradation of society, and ever increasing costs to the government, and to the individuals for their part of the cost. And again, there will be little money left to spend on military, on courts and police, on education, on roads, on common services like waste disposal, water supply, fire services, etc.
The best alternative still remains that we save, we save some more, and we save even some more, lead a healthy life style, pray lot, and take the hit of the thousands or lakhs when misfortune befalls us. And if we are not able to afford the procedure, we accept the fate, as we do in so many other things we are not able to afford, though we desire them the most. We would lose our loved ones in the most extreme cases, but still we all lose our loved ones in all cases, only the number of years we get with them will change marginally on an average, and in some unfortunate cases, we would lose them in the most unexpected years.
It is possible to make many things accident proof by spending astronomical sums on them. For example, road travel can be made to have zero accidents by improving vehicles, drivers, and the roads. But that would mean spending all taxes only on these items, and nothing else. We know that would be irrational, and so we live with about 1,50,000 deaths on Indian roads annually.
So why do we think that in case of Healthcare the government must make us free from the misfortune which we take as a fact of life in other areas of life on this planet?
Simply because the Leftists have convinced us that it is the duty of the government to pay for our Healthcare through a constant bombardment in media. Because they always look for ways to collectivise incomes, and Healthcare is one of the best tools for emotional blackmail and victimhood mongering. Who can oppose it if it is accompanied by the picture of a dying child?
So, we have laid out the full implications of the government paid Healthcare. It is your vote, it is your money, it is your health, vote yourselves all the entitlements you deem fit, but, but, when the inexorable, inescapable consequences kick in, and your world, including the hospital ward roof, start collapsing on you, do not say that you were not warned.
(And for God's sake, do not think that you can have First World Healthcare without first becoming rich like First World. You can't, even after collectivising your 100% incomes. Arithmetic never lies. Never.)