NEWS reports said the management of a medical college and hospital in Savar in the outskirt of the city on Saturday let two patients to leave the hospital after few days of detention as they were failing to pay treatment bills. It hears scandalous but it happened. The story said two patients – an elderly woman of Singair upazila in Manikganj district was admitted to the hospital on October 16 after being hit by an auto-rickshaw in the area. Another patient – a rickshaw-puller was rushed to the hospital following a road accident on September 24. The fact of the matter is that the hospital management claimed Tk 4 lakh as treatment fees of the rickshaw-puller; which was obviously beyond his capacity. The hospital also claimed Tk 2.73 lakh from the elderly woman but she was unable to pay more than Tk 40,000. Hospital management said as they became convinced that the patients were really poor, they let them go at the end.
It appears to be a quite serious matter as to why the hospital management made the claim of such a huge treatment fee which is quite on high side for anybody, not alone the poor man and woman. It is also not acceptable either that the hospital would let the patients go free because they are poor. The first thing, which would hit anybody’s mind, is that why the private hospital have not the minimum fees based on hospitals’ standard. As we see as there is no such discipline, which the government is supposed to put in place and ensure, patients are becoming victims of ruthless exploitation at all places. The high volume of fees in a local hospital shows they are rather running the facility as a business center, not to serve people at affordable cost.
It shows the paradox that the entire health sector is now facing after the government has privatized the health system and the wealthy people have taken up the advantage. But where the poor will go in situation like the one that they had faced requiring emergency hospitalization. The question is that in road accidents drivers and vehicles’ owners are enjoying impunity from punishment and even not required to pay compensation for medical cost and health injuries.
To the disbelief of many such accidents are treated as unavoidable in movements and the victim must undergo treatment at his or her own cost. We must not ignore the perils of such accidents, which make families penniless, and in our view that the government must find a reasonable way how to bear the cost of treatment of patients of road accidents and compensate the ones who die or become mime in the process.
