Doctors must embrace Right to Health Bill, not protest against it

• Recently, Rajasthan became the first state in India to pass the Right to Health (RTH) bill.
• The bill allows free access to out-patient and inpatient services in all government and selected private hospitals in the state.
• Ever since the bill was passed, the medical fraternity started protest against certain provisions of the bill.

Health situation of Rajasthan

• Rajasthan Secured 16th rank out of 19 in a report titled “Healthy states, progressive India by the NITI Aayog, World Bank and the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• National Family Health Survey -5 (2019-21):
  • Infant mortality rate: 30.3 per 1,000 live births.
  • Neonatal mortality rate: 20.2 per 1,000 live births.
• It is one of the states with highest levels of nutritional anaemia among women and children.
• The doctor-population ratio of the state is at an astoundingly low level of five doctors per 10,000 population .

Arguments against the protest of the bill

• As per official data, more than 78% of healthcare in India is now delivered by private players.
• The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has threatened to organise a national level protest against the RTH bill in days to come.
• It is a known fact that most of the office bearers of IMA are private practitioners and the election to various posts of the organisation are keenly fought on the basis of regional, political and monetary clout.
• As, RTH bill of Rajasthan was formulated after a series of meetings between the doctors and government officials.
• The bill underwent significant modifications from its original form which was introduced in the assembly in September 2022. It is thus not a bill designed without keeping the stakeholders in the loop.

Key provision which is reason of the protest:

• The Clause according to which any resident of the state will have the right to emergency treatment and care without prepayment at all hospitals and healthcare centres.
• The anxiety of the doctors about this clause is twofold:
  • Who decides what can be classified as a medical emergency.
  • The bureaucratic and political control and arm twisting when it comes to admitting or reimbursing payment for these patients.
• Both the apprehensions are justified but are not enough to be grounds to oppose a unique, first of its kind initiative by any Indian state in safeguarding the health of its citizens.
• Both the above-mentioned issues are not problems due to the RTH bill but rather a problem arising out of the doctors’ mistrust of the system.
• Embracing a patient friendly bill would have been an opportunity for the doctors of Rajasthan to douse this mistrust to some extent.

Conclusion

• The physician is in direct contact with people. Society and the physician are mirrors to each other. If the physician of today has to look good in the mirror, he/she has to help society look good.
• The easiest way to make society look good is to bring equality and justice and this may be at the cost of the physician’s ability to earn money.
• We doctors should not seem to be gathered under the canopy of organisational privileges.
• Rather, we should look like men working under the sun, hand-in-hand with the poor and the have-nots. Even if we don’t look rich, we should at least look kind.