Hospitals cannot run on CGHS rates alone. If all patients have to be treated on CGHS rates hospitals will go bankrupt. Moreover rates should ideally be revised yearly or at least once in three years to keep up with inflation. But CGHS rates aren’t revised that often.
The only way that is happening right now is the CGHS patients are being subsidised by government funds in government hospitals, student fees in medical college hospitals, and other paying patients in private hospitals.
Capping how much hospitals can charge is counterproductive. It will lead to cutting corners and avoiding investments in complex infrastructure and treatments altogether. A good example is the capping of stent prices, which essentially meant companies stopped selling better quality stents and even the people who could afford to pay for them couldn’t get it in India. Now imagine that scenario playing out in every speciality for every type of treatment. Expensive drugs won’t be available. Advanced equipment won’t be procured. Doctors won’t be incentivised to learn cutting edge therapies. We’ll just end up going back to the days when the elite travelled abroad for treatment, and the poor just had to let the disease run its course.
Also gone are the days when central institutes like AIIMS and PGI had the best doctors in every field. As things stand the best doctors may start their careers in these institutes but eventually move to work in corporate hospitals, simply because the pay is incomparable.
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