Wednesday, November 24, 2010

How insurance gonna raise health care cost



The insurance in health sector is on the rise in India. It is indeed beneficial to the patients, when a disease strikes and huge expenses are incurred in the treatment. Treatment cost is usually not considered in a family's budget and they are often caught unaware and left devastated by a sudden disease.

But, there are problems we are gonna have with insurance. People pay premium and think it's their duty to utilise the insurance to the maximum. People seek unnecessary treatment, do investigations without proper indications, and seek expensive treatments. This would raise the total per-capita treatment cost. All expenses are inturn recovered by the insurance companies from the people, by raising the premium.


As the time goes by health care costs will rise. People will hardly question the value for money of the treatment, as it looks free to them. Insurance will become must or an unexpected disease will be totally devastating, more than it's now. The insurance will only be available at high premium, that's a big proportion of family's monthly income.

The only people who gain from this will be large corporate hospitals.
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Monday, November 8, 2010

Trip to Ranipuram (7/11/10)

Ranipuram is a small hill on Kanhangad - Madikeri road bordering Coorg. We set off to Ranipuram without much preparation on a Sunday morning.
We were told that the  road goes right to the top, so I had taken my wife and 5 yr old boy also along.
One has to take Kanhangad-Panathur road, and drive for about an hour. Just before reaching Panathur, a road deviates westward, which right away starts the ascent, which goes on for about 10km. It ends at a small T shop, from where have to climb.
My family stopped there and I climbed alone. Soon I started getting scared and hesitating to go.The path was through the forest,  with steep climb, slightly wet, a few stone steps here and there, full of leeches. But then two youngsters came, and I joined them. The path is a walk way, single unbroken one right to the top. Its very tedious, steep. We didn't stop, for fear of leeches. After about half hour, the trees end, then it's grass land. The path is still obvious, winding up between the tall grass. It was about 2pm, but there was strong winds and it was pretty cool. It was great view from the top, worth all the efforts. we took some time to ward off the leeches, rested for 10 minutes, and descended down. the descent is tedious too, puts lots of strain on leg muscles, to control the descent. As descent is faster, less leeches hooked on this time.
The trip was worth it.