NCAER bats for investment in public healthcare services

Healthy Dose

♦ In many cases, patients didn’t know what they were suffering from

♦ They’re not aware of right places to seek advice and treatment from

♦ Clueless over whether a healthcare provider is trustworthy and what outcomes to realistically expect

The premier think-tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) has recommended investment into public healthcare services and trustworthy guidance towards ensuring that such services reach vulnerable people before predatory, unqualified providers do. Even modest investments, it said, can yield significant gains and drive out predatory quacks.

The NCAER found that in the absence of trustworthy guidance, patients seeking healthcare became lost in the complex maze of India’s poorly regulated health system. “While people bravely navigated uncharted terrain of overlapping personal, familial, moral, economic, and cultural obligations and difficult health systems spaces, they were often led down wrong paths by unscrupulous providers,” it said in a recent policy brief.

The notion of a journey without a clear route and many uncertain turns and blind alleys defined the respondents’ experience, given that the patients did not know what they were suffering from, the right places to seek advice and treatment from, whether a healthcare provider was appropriate and trustworthy, and what outcomes to realistically expect, the brief said.

“Our study found that the patients’ initial care seeking stage is when people are most desperate, and therefore most vulnerable, to being misled and/or exploited by unscrupulous, profiteering healthcare providers,” the NCAER said, adding that in their frantic search to ‘cure’ their incurable condition, people resort to ‘distress spending’ in the form of selling assets, borrowing at extortionist rates, and foregoing educational opportunities for their children, which for the poor and near-poor can be disastrous.

Establishing trustworthy sources of guidance and care at the first point of call is critical, especially for the poor, the policy brief said.