The paradoxical health policy

During the tenure of Dr. Y S Rajasekhara Reddy as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, a government sponsored cashless hospitalization scheme named "Rajiv Aarogya Shree" was rolled out by the A.P. State Government. The then CM YSR claimed that the purpose of this scheme was to ensure even the poorest of the people get access to treatment in corporate hospitals. This was a very huge program and involved huge governmental expenditure.

Now, let us look at what the responsibility of the Health Ministry at the State Governmental level. The health ministry is supposed to look after the development of all primary health centres, general hospitals, and other state run hospitals. Needless to say, the government has an obligation to use the tax-payers' money to improve the infrastructure of the state run hospitals and also attract best doctors in the country to work in those hospitals. 

Instead of taking up the initiative to improve the existing state of the government run hospitals and make sure that these hospitals provide healthcare on par with the private hospitals, I seriously don't understand the reason behind the government spending such huge expenditure on corporate hospitals. Here, in case we feel that it's important to have a free market economy in place, then, the government should totally absolve itself from the responsibility of maintaining any health centres or hospitals and only concentrate on the implementation of the public health insurance schemes. This will in fact ensure better and uniform medical services to all classes of people irrespective of their financial stature and the competition between hospitals will improve leading to cost effective healthcare for common people.

If this government sponsored cashless hospitalization scheme for the poor is made popular all over the country, what will be the future of the government run hospitals? They will only become sources of misappropriation of public funds in the disguise of expenditure.