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Comment by piyush_soni | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. Thanks to India's affordable health care, we don't have to be dependent on this national scam called health insurance. We just go to doctors, they give us treatment, we pay money, that's it. I remember how here in US I had to go to a doctor to be told "You don't have any disease, that happens to everybody" (no diagnosis) and charged $400. Insurance paid $300, I paid $100.

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Right.. That "national scam" is working great all over Europe. It's cool when you can pay your treatments, but cancer treatments are in the 6 figure range - enjoy paying that from you bank account.

The funny thing is, at least here in the US, even if you have medical insurance you are totally ripped off your pockets if you have something like cancer. Mostly, you just don't pay the price which was anyway artificially inflated by this scam I'm talking about. There was an article only a few days back about this guy who had his appendix treated: http://imgur.com/a/WIfeN

He had to pay $11k out of the total $55k bill, rest was paid by insurance. ($7000 for a CT scan? $4500 worth of Anesthesia? I'd be surprised if one still doesn't think these are artificially inflated prices)

I'm not sure how much would he be charged if this whole insurance thing was not there - may be ~$11k?

(Just for the curious: In India, that operation in the best of hospitals would have cost him may be around $1600 without insurance. With insurance, he'd save most of even that. )

On the other hand, if you adjust the costs for purchasing power, the unfortunate result is that most of the people are pretty much fucked.

In fact the US would look cheaper for the majority of the population. Which is comparing against a low bar.

I don't think you could classify that as a working system.

>On the other hand, if you adjust the costs for purchasing power, the unfortunate result is that most of the people are pretty much fucked.

They are not. As I said, this was the cost in the best of hospitals. In government hospitals, poor people get medical care for a fraction of it. Of course, the health care system is still not good, but I'm convinced that a US like system of insurance is not a solution either. Canada and some other countries have it much better.

>In fact the US would look cheaper for the majority of the population.

No, it's not. Had this system been working, millions of Americans wouldn't go outside USA to get basic treatment (many of them go to India). Something is fundamentally wrong here ([1], [2], [3], [4]).

[1] 7.5 Million US residents travel abroad for care each year: http://www.cdc.gov/features/medicaltourism/

[2] Medical Bills Are the Biggest Cause of US Bankruptcies: Study : http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148

[3] Why U.S. Health Care Is Obscenely Expensive, In 12 Charts : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/health-care-costs-_...

[4] 'Medical tourism' draws Americans to India : http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/traveler...

I agree with some of your points here, but this has to be noted.

It's not 7.5 million US residents per year, it's 750,000.

And this:

"The nonpartisan Fraser Institute reported that 46,159 Canadians sought medical treatment outside of Canada in 2011, as wait times increased 104 percent — more than double — compared with statistics from 1993."

Calculated upwards, that would be 404,000 or so on a population equal basis with the US. A lot of Canadians are seeking treatment abroad too.

Humm ... That's a mistake on my part. But this is because I'd seen another article from 2009 [5] which clearly said it was 6 million. And this article was from 2014 so I quickly read that as 7.5 million.

[5] http://news.health.com/2009/04/08/traveling-treatment/

That image is insane. $7,500 for a couple of hours in a recovery room. Not sure how that can be justified, they're clearly just getting as much money out of people as possible. As the services are not exactly optional.

See my reply to markdown for context on his/her comment (if you're not aware).

You should clarify your comment by mentioning what state and city you live in, how much you earn a year, and how many multiples that is of the average income in India, and in your state.

Healthcare in India is operated by the states; there is no national program. Care is not consistent. [0]

In India, can doctors provide food? I'm serious. 42% of Indian children are malnourished [1] - a frighteningly higher rate than the average malnourishment rate of sub-Saharan African countries.

This is but one figure representing India's overall healthcare system (or lack thereof), and unhealthy populace.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_India

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India#Health_iss...

Health care in India has a lot of issues, but it's affordable for most part. And if you read my reply to plaguuuuuu below, I wrote that it's still not good - but going the US way of insurance lobbying is not a solution either (because certainly, it's not working). Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who don't even have money to pay food, understandably they won't have money to pay for medicines. They get free government treatment in many cases (though no free food). There is a new Food Security bill passed late last year which is made to tackle those 42% undernourished children and other poor people. Implementation of that, in a populous country like India will take time. Poverty is a complex problem to solve.

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