Unless India plans to enslave doctors, I don't see how they could possibly give out healthcare for free.
India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
81–90 of 137 posts
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#82To have any chance of success they should fix the corruption first, otherwise it will become yet another way to waste taxpayers' money.
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#83to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year. That sum, while small by Western standards, would be enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries in India. If something like this is implemented, I'm curious to see what it does to prices - will a heart surgery continue to cost less than $2,000? Healthcare seems like a supply problem to me, not a demand one. Where healthcare is affordable, demand s…
> If something like this is implemented, I'm curious to see what it does to prices - will a heart surgery continue to cost less than $2,000?
In most countries, the cost of such operations are fixed by the state (ex: Canada).
> "Where healthcare is affordable, demand should be stable year-to-year.
What do you mean? There are so many factors that could explain higher healthcare costs, including an aging population, or better health coverage.
I'm also not sure what it means for healthcare to be affordable. In most countries, the cost seems proportional to the general wealth. The US might be the exception, since it's one of the few countries with great wealth disparity and with a non-universal system (more bureaucratic overhead/costs).
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#84We 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.
I live an europe, and having recently gotten very ill, I go to nationalized doctors a lot. It's not free, but very close to free, and I would be bankrupt in the US by now. For instance, I did an MRI for less than 50 EUR. How much do you think it costs in the US? I would guess at least an order of magnitude more, likely more.
I went to a just a few private doctors too to get a second opinion, and because they had a reputation as some of the best in the field, and they were cheap as well. My guess is because they have to compete with the national healthcare system.
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#85I really dislike when professional journalists call it "free healthcare", this should really needs to stop. It's not free, half the country will be paying for it with their taxes. In countries with public healthcare up to a third of their taxes expenditure goes to healthcare services, it's a significant expense and far from 'free'.
Journalists should really start using "public healthcare" or "public health insurance", otherwise they are making their agenda quite clear. And I say that in support of gov subsidized health insurance.
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#86The 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…
+1 for corruption at all levels in the process.
+1 that many people benefited who were unable to afford decent healthcare
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#87Until the details are revealed, I won't buy this. It seems to have been introduced to take advantage of upcoming elections. The reason I'm skeptical about this step is because there are simply no specific blueprint whatsoever. And with recent government implementations, their biggest failure turns out to be ambiguity. Good example is GST. After it's launch several month's ago, almost every big/small industry is findi…
> Good example is GST. After it's launch several month's ago, almost every big/small industry is finding it hard to get the specific details. I don't get what problems does industry have with regards to GST apart from simpler return filing and changes in rates. The implementation was itself smoother than expected. Just compare with other countries that implemented GST and you'll realise that it took almost 2 years fo…
GST is only complex for people who don't have to file it.
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#88I really dislike when professional journalists call it "free healthcare", this should really needs to stop. It's not free, half the country will be paying for it with their taxes. In countries with public healthcare up to a third of their taxes expenditure goes to healthcare services, it's a significant expense and far from 'free'. Journalists should really start using "public healthcare" or "public health insurance"…
This is a pointless and pedantic complaint. It's obvious to everyone what "free healthcare" means. Words have multiple meanings, and free in this context means tax-funded. Prescriptive language policing never works.
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#89I really dislike when professional journalists call it "free healthcare", this should really needs to stop. It's not free, half the country will be paying for it with their taxes. In countries with public healthcare up to a third of their taxes expenditure goes to healthcare services, it's a significant expense and far from 'free'. Journalists should really start using "public healthcare" or "public health insurance"…
Everyone knows what free healthcare means. They know it means it’ll come from taxes. Otherwise they are just furthering an agenda? That seems like quite a stretch.
Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
#90This is a blatant lie. The devil is in the details and the detail is there has been no specific funds allocated in the budget for this nor are there any specifics about how the funds will be allocated in the future.[1] This is just a vague expression of intent. Precisely the type that every politician will make when in desperate need of good will - exactly what Modi is in need of. [1] thread about this https://twitte…
This. To add to this, PM Modi and the current administration habitually make grandiose promises and setting up new schemes with a lot of fanfare just in time for key elections. When the elections are won, the promises and schemes are quietly forgotten.