Healthcare costs: Government needs to share more
The government is spending little, not even half, of the health care expenses in the countrys public hospitals and health centres. According to a report yesterday, the commoners are paying 63 per cent of expenditures when they go to seek health services from these places. Barring the out patients department where a patient only pays the fixed nominal fee, the indoor patients do not usually get medicine and operation equipment from the hospitals sources. They have to buy the same from outside and this makes their healthcare costs exorbitant.
The marginal people who cannot provide this cost have to suffer with their diseases and even may have to face fatal consequences for their financial inability. Yet there is government allocation for drugs and other medical equipment in the public hospitals. Allegation is that the storerooms of drugs and other necessary equipment often remains empty in publicly operated health centres because people involved sell out those to private pharmaceutical shops. In many cases, patients in public hospitals have to pay bribe for securing a hospital bed.
The governments annual budget for the entire health, population and nutrition sector is less than four per cent. Even this paltry allocation gets misused in the hands of the corrupt caregivers. Therefore, it is very important, on the one hand, to increase the budgetary allocation for health service and, on the other hand, to stop misuse of the funds allocated. There is another point. Plain and simple, the public health facilities remain always unclean and in cases unhygienic also. The relevant authorities must take care of this. On the other hand, the government also needs to do something to stop private health centres from fleecing the patients. Even though ours is free market economy, it does not mean that private hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres, out of their free will, would take undue money in the name of unnecessary tests and procedures. According to medical sources, 30 per cent healthcare costs would decrease for the patients of all economic groups if unethical practices of doctors can be stopped.
If the government wants, through initiating dialogue with the owners of private health facilities and introducing monitoring mechanism on private hospitals, costs of healthcare at these places can be kept at a reasonable level.
