The heartless exploiting the hapless
15 February 2017
The Dalai Lama has succinctly described the crass
stupidity of modern-day humans who take their health for granted. Man,
he has said, sacrifices his health in order to make money and then
sacrifices money to recuperate his health. This explains why man has
become a victim of the thriving healthcare industry. The Buddha has
preached that health is wealth. Even a non-Buddhist who gets the shock
of his life on being given a huge bill at a private hospital will agree
with the Enlightened One!
How bad the situation would have
been for the poor if not for the free healthcare system in this country
is not difficult to guess. But, sadly, the public is still at the
mercy of private hospitals owing to the many ills that the public
health sector is afflicted with. Newspapers are full of heart-rending
appeals from poor patients for public assistance as they cannot pay for
life-saving operations in private hospitals. Successive governments
have made no serious effort to develop the state-run hospital network
and liberate the sick from the clutches of mudalalis. Budgetary
allocations for the public health sector have recorded a steady
decline.
However, the incumbent government has taken some
progressive steps for the benefit of the sick. Health Minister Dr.
Rajitha Senaratne is reported to have ordered that the prices of
artificial eye lenses be slashed immediately. A lens imported from
India is sold here with an average markup of 500%, according to the
Health Ministry. This is a crime.
How can those who keep
such a huge margin at the expense of visually impaired fellow citizens
call themselves humans? The government must do everything in its power
to stop this kind of exploitation of the sick. The incidence of
cataract remains alarmingly high. The lens racket has been going on for
a long time and it is high time it was tackled once and for all.
We
usually have no civil word to say about politicians, especially
government spokesmen who have no control over their restless tongues.
But, credit where credit is due, Minister Senaratne has helped bring
down the prices of some drugs much to the relief of the public though
there is a long way to go before he can call the government drug policy
a success. One may agree with his detractors that the Big Pharma is
far from tamed, but the fact remains that some relief is better than no
relief at all.
The Health Minister’s decision to provide
more eye lenses free of charge at state-run hospitals is commendable.
His free-stent project has stood thousands of heart patients in good
stead; some unscrupulous doctors and surgical device importers have
been thriving on what may be called the lucrative stent trade. A wag
says hardly anyone who visits a cardiologist returns home without a
stent in his or her ticker. Minister Senaratne has also succeeded in
persuading the government to remove the ceiling on financial allocations
for treating cancer patients. These are, no doubt, meritorious deeds
for which the ruling coalition should be thanked in spite of its many
failings.
Government interventions to impose price ceilings
for the sake of the public usually lead to artificial shortages of the
goods concerned and the lowering of their quality. The mess the present
administration has got into in trying to control rice prices may serve
as an example.
The challenge before the Health Ministry is
to ensure that reasonably priced eye lenses will be freely available
and their quality will not suffer due to the slashing of their
exorbitant prices. The most effective way of regulating the
profit-hungry private importers hell bent on exploiting the hapless
public is to strengthen the state sector as a formidable competitor. The
government ought to develop state outfits such as the State
Pharmaceutical Corporation and make the best use of them to bring
relief to the public.
