Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 137 posts

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#41

Post by dingo_bat »

i0exception wrote: post #18
nodesocket wrote: post #15

I can't see how India is going to afford this. As stated in another comment it could cost up to $800B dollars, which is 30% of India's GDP. If this causes India to have financial issues as a country, it's their own fault for not doing basic accounting and number crunching.

That's like saying if everyone maxes out their health insurance, insurance companies will go out of business. In any given year, not everyone is going to use the ~$8000 allocated to them. Also, healthcare in India is cheap. $8000 goes a long way.

> healthcare in India is cheap. $8000 goes a long way.

Yeah I think ₹5 lakh is excessive. I have a ₹2 lakh cover for me and my wife and unless we both are diagnosed with bone cancer simultaneously we are in no danger of maxing it out.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#42

Post by perseusprime11 »

Cheap, fast and great generally don’t go together. Depending on the problem, you have to pick either one or two but not all three. It will be interesting to see how this experiment pans out in India. I wholeheartedly wish success for them because this is something we have to put behind our back before we enter the next decade.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#43

Post by govg »

ethagknight wrote: post #7

>> The health care plan, part of the government’s 2018-19 budget presented on Thursday, would offer 100 million families up to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year. Thats roughly $800B dollars, or over 30% of India's GDP. What am I missing? Most people won't participate? EDIT: according to the article, the Finance Ministry has allocated $314 million (or 4 hundredths of a percent of the theoretical m…

Well, the idea behind offering insurance is that you typically don't need to account for everyone claiming it at the same time.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#44

Post by empath75 »

tejaswiy wrote: post #33

The govt. of Andhra Pradesh (a state in India) has pioneered a state backed insurance program several years ago with reasonable success ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarogyasri ). The problem however with these programs is that corruption within the healthcare industry is still endemic and doctors create fake diagnoses and perform unnecessary surgeries on patients to get their reimbursements from Aarogya-sri. If th…

> If this program is to be rolled out a national scale, the govt. needs to address the systematic corruption in the healthcare industry first.

I think it depends on how much corruption is tolerable when trying to achieve such an important goal.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#45

Post by thisisit »

vidarh wrote: post #37
thisisit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't universal healthcare that all people and communities have the same access to healthcare? India's population is 1.3 billion and this says it will cover 500 million people. So, it doesn't cover all people and communities. It covers some part of the population. Let's say Obamacare covered only a specific section of US what would have happened then? To clarify my stand here, I am in favor of Universal Healthcare bu…

In a lot of countries with universal healthcare it is provided by the government insuring the poorest and the unemployed, and requiring everyone else to insure themselves. The idea being that it gives those with the means who might want to pick and choose higher levels of coverage can do so, but nobody gets left behind.

Thank you for highlighting that.

Food Security bill provided coverage to 2/3rd of population which was estimated to be 850 million people.

This bill says it will cover up to 500 million people.

So there are 320 million people who are poor that they can't eat but not poor for health care. That is the question on inclusive-ness.

Though we have to see the full bill to actually find out what exactly is going on.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#46

Post by Feniks »

t1o5 wrote: post #26

To be read as - the elections are coming. Mr Modi is seeking a second term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_elections_in_India NYT article to be read in tandem with this one https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-budget/with-electio...

Is there something wrong with that? The guy who introduced social security for the elderly and in my country got a statue in Parliament.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#47

Post by jasonlotito »

groby_b wrote: post #32
holydude wrote: post #21

We got free healthcare in europe that i pay for with atrociously high taxes. Yet whenever i actually need to visit a doctor i always go to a private one.

Let me translate that: "I sure have a lot of money". The point is having a doctor available for everybody , not just the people who can afford it. Yes, those of us who make more money pay more for it, in the form of taxes. Ultimately, you'll need to decide if you want to care only about your wellbeing, or about society's wellbeing.

> The point is having a doctor available for everybody

Not necessarily in a timely manner, which is important for things like Autism (and because of the belief in the system, can actually harm the person). Even if you can afford it, you don't necessarily get to see a doctor, even with years long wait times. And even if you see a doctor, the actual service they provide might be worthless (e.g. suggesting you put your child in an institution and forget about it).

This is just my experience dealing with the Canadian healthcare system in Montreal. Moving to the US provided cheaper, faster, and superior results in every metric.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#48

Post by horsecaptin »

kumarm wrote: post #40
tejaswiy wrote: post #33

The govt. of Andhra Pradesh (a state in India) has pioneered a state backed insurance program several years ago with reasonable success ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarogyasri ). The problem however with these programs is that corruption within the healthcare industry is still endemic and doctors create fake diagnoses and perform unnecessary surgeries on patients to get their reimbursements from Aarogya-sri. If th…

Definitely Aarogyasri in AP saved millions of Lives. Current administration tried to remove the program since its not introduced by them and can't take credit for. So they are trying to kill it slowly (By removing people from program, cutting benefits etc). I wonder what will happen to this Free Health insurance program when central government changes next time.

Isn't the current government conservative and pro-business? If the are the ones implementing free healthcare, then why should the leftist opposition want to remove it?

I bet they'll try to undermine it at every stage well before they ever get power. That will make it easy to kill or fix it when they do get power back.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#49

Post by moduspol »

ucaetano wrote: post #9

Giving free healthcare is a good step, but the important question is how good will it be and how much will be covered. Brazil has 100% of its population (210M people) covered by free, single-payer, universal healthcare, resulting in a life expectancy of 75 years (US is 79, Japan and Switzerland with 83 IIRC). But your experience can vary dramatically. It all depends on how much money is actually being put on it (in h…

In the US alone, life expectancy rates by county vary by as much as 20 years. It is a terrible metric for measuring a healthcare system.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#50

Post by IanDrake »

horsecaptin wrote: post #48
kumarm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely Aarogyasri in AP saved millions of Lives. Current administration tried to remove the program since its not introduced by them and can't take credit for. So they are trying to kill it slowly (By removing people from program, cutting benefits etc). I wonder what will happen to this Free Health insurance program when central government changes next time.

Isn't the current government conservative and pro-business? If the are the ones implementing free healthcare, then why should the leftist opposition want to remove it? I bet they'll try to undermine it at every stage well before they ever get power. That will make it easy to kill or fix it when they do get power back.

According to the article, there already is free healthcare provided by the government. The problem is that model, predictably, sucks.

“Although government-run hospitals are theoretically free for everyone, the waits are long, quality is poor and corruption is endemic.”

So the left doesn’t want private healthcare providers to show them up.

Post reply on HN