What’s the real cost of living and dying in a hospital in India? Well, it’s a thin line between a patient’s luck and the physician’s acumen, where the battle for life often comes at a steep financial price. Is treating the sick merely a business proposition? Does the Hippocratic Oath mean nothing to the medicos once they enter the profession? Why should a third of the population in the country be pushed into poverty by healthcare costs? These questions are explicitly discussed than in Dr Sumanth C Raman’s latest book Sick Business: The Truth Behind Healthcare in India, which lays bare the functionings of the Indian medical system. It is a chilling portrait of how the healthcare system—private and government—in our country works; how rigged the system is; and the emotional turmoil that both patients and doctors face.
It’s a wakeup call to reassess all the small steps and the giant leaps that are needed to fix the system. To begin with, Sick Business provides a grim picture of the healthcare system with its no-holds-barred interviews and riveting accounts. There are confessions by doctors, healthcare professionals, pharma executives and patients—all functioning as a clarion call to fix the gaps that exist in the system.
These aren’t stories that we aren’t already aware of, nor are these revelations that come as eye-openers. By putting together all the anecdotal narratives, and backing them with compelling data, however, Dr Raman exposes the pristine white .
