If public hospitals can cure COVID patients at low costs, why cannot private hospitals?

A young colleague called me recently after a traumatic recovery from COVID. He is diabetic and has other health complications besides, so he thought he would be better-off having himself treated by top doctors in a state-of-the-art private hospital in his non-metro city.

He got the shock of his life when they said it would cost him Rs nine lakh for a bed, the "package" they offered - package! – included Rs. 10,000 per day for medicines for two weeks, and he would have to pay the cost of the PPE and all other equipment used by nurses and doctors tending to him during the time every day– he realised they were charging every patient for the same PPE over and over again. He thought it was a big scam.

He decided to admit himself to the district civil hospital in the city where they charged him Rs. 50 (fifty) per day for three medicines and less than Rs. 1,000 per day for equipment that included oxygen cylinders and ventilators. With his multiple ailments, including chronic kidney disease, he should have had no hope of survival. But it is almost a miracle that the doctors at the district civil hospital pulled him out of danger and did not allow the comorbidity factors to undermine his chances of recovery. Out of hospital for a week now, he is fighting fit and back to the normal activities of a journalist.

His may be a one-off case but from a long conversation with him and from my own experience over the years, I have come to the conclusion that while it is doctors at the public hospitals who have the best experience and chances of curing patients, we have done little to improve our health infrastructure over the years.

Else there would be no reason for people to value the overcharging at private hospitals which, even before the Coronavirus crisis, were notorious for such avarice as was exposed by the case of a particular corporate hospital billing lakhs to the parents of a child who ultimately they could not save from an ordinary infection like dengue.

As I have said often over the past weeks, the Corona crisis has brought out the best and the worst in people and that includes hospitals and the political establishment. Doctors at private hospitals have simply stopped their practices or introduced online consultations to keep their earnings going. Those at public hospitals have cried themselves hoarse about lack of facilities but kept up the war on COVID, even effecting miracles like they pulled off with regard to my young colleague’s risk of comorbidity.

However, it is the games that political leaders have been playing that has come as confirmation of their general callousness towards their constituency – the people in general, no matter where they belong. There have been suggestions – and I tend to agree - that the migrant workers' crisis during the lockdown happened because these workers belonged nowhere - they worked in states where they were not voters and they did not vote in states where they had their homes. So, they were of no use to politicians in either state. But, surprisingly, a nativist party like the Shiv Sena treated the migrants better than a nationalist one like the BJP, though the biggest revelation has been the attitude of the Government in Delhi which is largely a city of migrants. And yet, the Government decreed that Delhi’s public hospitals would be made available to only those holding Aadhar cards with Delhi addresses. Luckily the decision was overturned by the Lt. Governor.

However, it amazes me more that chief ministers who are sworn to protect the Constitution should discriminate among people who are all equal anywhere in the country by virtue of our Constitution. For it is not just the Delhi government that attempted to discriminate – at the start of the crisis when Kerala seemed to have more cases than any other states, the Karnataka government barred hospitals in Mangalore from admitting patients from North Kerala who have easier access across the border. The fact that Kerala has a Communist government was more important than saving the lives of people per se.

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister first would not allow migrant workers from his own state to return unless they could prove they were not infected and when they did return in droves, he forbade other states from taking them back without his consent. So Constitutional rights, anyone?

But then again there are moral issues in personal or private situations. I have been horrified by reports of how a mother – mother! – who caught COVID was abandoned by her son who would not reclaim her body to conduct her funeral. She was cremated by some NGOs – if they could risk the virus without fear, why couldn’t her son?

But then at least this mother found someone to take care of her after her death…What about bodies, clothed or unclothed, which have surfaced outside various hospitals across the country, including one in Ahmedabad and another in Delhi? One does not even know if they were abandoned by families or simply dumped as garbage by callous hospital authorities – in either case, it does not speak much about us as a civilisation or culture when we have so little respect for the dead.

But I put the blame for this lack of moral fibre among our people – of all sections and classes - on our political leadership. They should have been leading by example, instead they have been as avaricious as our private hospitals - look at the ruling party's obsession with money, including the PM Cares funds collected in the name of the COVID crisis but kept it miserly out of the reach of the people it was meant for.

They have also shown a marked lack of compassion for the poor and miserable, reflected in the manner in which private hospitals have been treating the COVID crisis as a money-spinner. They have discriminated against people, leading to despotic behaviour by Residents Welfare Committees and associations who have acted abominably, without sympathy, against those infected in their buildings. And they have placed self above the nation, leading to the possibility of the crisis blowing up even bigger in the next few weeks as well as manifest in other ways leading to the collapse of the nation.

Yes, the Coronavirus crisis has been far more revealing of our frailties and morals as a nation than I would have ever expected.

We have only ourselves to blame.