Letters: Affordable health care

Apropos T N Ninan's column "Don't subsidise, build" (Weekend Ruminations, April 18), public health is meant for the poor and the government in its wisdom plans slashes the Budget. The uninsured - that includes the uninsurable such as senior citizens - are certainly in a crisis. Health care is moving into the private domain, which is not only subsidised but beyond the affordability of the average citizen with its high-tech and high-cost medical care.

The patient is now a consumer and it is the middle-class, which has to bear the high costs. Healing is not about ill health or diseases any longer but an epidemic of diagnoses. Our government should have developed health care on the model of many European, British and Canadian governments. The current model is unsustainable since the majority of Indians cannot afford private medical care. The author's suggestion to open more public hospitals merits implementation.

H N Ramakrishna Bengaluru

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