Healthcare or fate?

Can you make people honest by passing laws? Only if those doing the passing are governed by the same laws themselves. Indian politicians are addicted to freebies at taxpayer expense but have passed a law forbidding pharma companies from giving freebies to doctors. Why do pharma companies bribe doctors to prescribe their products? Because there are hundreds of companies selling dubious preparations of the same drug. The common antibiotic, amoxycillin is sold under 350 different names, a lot of them are manufactured in small dirty rooms in some town. When 13 women died in Chhattisgarh following routine sterilisation operations the cause was traced to rat poison in the ciprofloxacin tablets. Who gives licenses to these illicit companies? Politicians and civil servants. It is well known that doctors receive kickbacks from investigations such as pathological tests, x rays and from various scans. We know that our business fellows are some of the most corrupt in the world, so why are so many investing in healthcare? They set financial targets on doctors and those who fail are thrown out. Patients are frightened into getting admitted, loads of tests are carried out and then undergo unnecessary procedures such as angioplasty, putting them at unnecessary risk and costing vast sums of money. Patients are charged 3 times the cost of stents. At times it seems that doctors collude with each other to give falsely abnormal results so that the patient has no choice but to accept procedures. A new wheeze is called ' international practice '. Previously the clinician in charge examined the patient and wrote down what fluids and drugs to give. Today the clinician admits the patient, another doctor is consulted to write the fluid regimen, a third writes the drug prescription while a fourth is called to interpret the biochemistry results. A nice fat bill results. The rot starts early. Because of the reservation system hundreds of students are denied admission to government medical schools. They have to pay millions in capitation fees to get admission in private schools. It is only natural that they will want to earn as much as possible to pay back their parents who may have taken hefty loans to support their children. The tragedy is that despite spending vast sums of money people get very poor service and often have to suffer serious consequences. To avoid such risks our politicians and civil servants have awarded themselves treatment in foreign countries with a ' companion '. At taxpayer expense, of course. Medical devices rejected by rich countries are sold here at inflated prices while China is charging us higher rates of vaccines of Japanese encephalitis. It is a wonder that some people do survive. Maybe fate.