Mamata's prescription for private hospitals in Bengal shows her as people's CM
It was February 22. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee invited the heads of private hospitals and nursing homes for some words of wisdom over lunch packets.
As the clock struck one, Banerjee asked the audio-visual channels to take their position and shoot the programme live. With nothing but a microphone in hand, she made the hospital honchos stand in the firing line. It was a surgical strike of a different kind, but no less significant, secretive and sudden than PM Narendra Modi’s one on high denomination notes.
In a firm and no-nonsense tone, she called up the authorities, one by one, and fired salvos. “Have you stopped the kidney racket in your hospital?” The shell-shocked person was trying to refute when in flew another missile: “We have reports from the Centre.” She was not firing in the air. Armed with documents and reports of a survey, she was hitting where it hurt the most.
“Why is your billing so exorbitant that the patient is forced to take law unto their own hands,” she questioned, adding, “I have reports that patients are being forced into life support system to fleece money. Bills are exaggerated and doctors are made to prescribe high-end medicines and costly treatment to jack up the expenses.”
She held everyone at gun-point. “A hospital is not a slaughter house. Neither is it a factory of brick and mortar where the principal agenda is to make quick money. Try to be humane, more caring. After all, it is a noble service. Healthcare cannot be purchased,” Banerjee prescribed. The bombardment went on for two long hours; at the end of which the authorities were left baffled and looking for cover.
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| The growing grievances and discontent of people against private healthcare system found a voice. |
The growing grievances and discontent of people against private healthcare system found a voice, and she emerged as people’s chief minister by empathising with those who mortgaged their land, property and sold everything to pay the sky-high hospital bills. The eye opener for her was an exorbitant bill of Rs 25 lakh an MLA had to pay for treatment of a close relative at a private hospital. She immediately sent an investigative team to enquire as to how the private hospitals were harassing and fleecing the patients to no ends.
After surveying 942 private hospitals out of 2,088 registered ones, the government has sent show-cause notices to 70 and cancelled the licence of 33. More are on the anvil, even reputed ones of the city.
The state government is bringing in a Bill to set rolling a ten-member team of Health Regulatory Commission under a retired judge of Calcutta High Court. The commission will monitor the functioning of the private healthcare units and keep a tab on billing and the method of treatment. The government wants transparency from the private players, who are out to gain commercially.
According to an officer of the health department, majority of these hospitals got land from the government for a token amount of Rs 1. “But these places, without bothering to reserve a certain percentage of beds for the economically weaker section, have turned the healthcare institutions into moneymaking industry,” he rued.
Some well-known hospitals on Kolkata’s eastern fringes had a huge market in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and the Northeastern states. But for the last few years, the Bangladesh patients are moving to southeast Asian countries because treatment is turning out to be expensive.
The hospital industry has always been flourishing in West Bengal and the chief minister could ill afford to lose health tourists, which is also a reason for pulling up the hospitals.
(Coiurtesy of Mail Today.)