Advance India’s healthcare system, rather than flying sick bureaucrats abroad

Lately the ‘common man’s’ government has decided to let the IAS, IPS and IFS officers and their immediate family members fly abroad, at public cost, for health treatments for wide number of ailments for up to two months.

India is a budding harbour for medical tourism and we need to reinforce our own healthcare system to utilise this opportunity. Thus, it is disheartening that the government is willing to splurge scant resources on the privileged that has forsaken its job of mending the domestic healthcare system and instead are going for greener pastures overseas that too at public expenditure.

Public servants, who cannot obtain tuberculosis drugs fast enough to avoid a stock-out in various centres across the country, would like no cost spared when it comes to taking care of their health. Already, treatment is gradually shifting from government to private hospitals, which has raised the cost of medication; nevertheless, a better-formulated medical sector can cut down costs and lower expenses for patients.

The government ought to spend more on expanding public health, maintain improved regulation of hospitals and medical insurance companies and focus on the treatment of the poor. Not just healthcare, the same story is in the education sector as well. The top-notch have rejected the public education system; consequently, it has relapsed, nurturing an increasingly high-priced private sector.

The need of the hour is the institutional reform to make education and healthcare economical, which falls under the budget of every class, not interfering with rules to give benefaction to a select few. With the step that the government has taken, the fiscal deficit will shoot up to pamper an already pampered lot.