As Luigi Mangione fever takes over my TikTok timeline, I feel compelled to think about the global state of healthcare. One would have thought that after the dramatic circumstances around the recent pandemic, which exposed the fragile nature of our medical infrastructure, we would have collectively focussed on making improvements, amending our laws and policies in order to allocate better resources for hospitals. But this hasn’t quite been the case. In Gaza, the occupying forces have been systemically destroying such infrastructure, deliberately targeting healthcare providers and making it impossible for the wounded to seek any form of triage. In the US, there are murmurs of deep class-related unrest as the recent murder of a CEO of a health insurance company has triggered intense debates about the sorry state of healthcare there, and the deep inequalities that exist that prevent large chunks of the population from accessing timely care. I read that most instances of bankruptcy happen after illness, in the US, because people cannot afford to pay their exorbitant bills. So wedded is the system to capitalism that the powers that be are unwilling to even imagine a social welfare system supported by free healthcare for all.

In India, the situation isn’t ideal. The inability of government-subsidised healthcare infrastructure to manage the demand has led to the rapid rise and spread of private options. You enter a private hospital and suddenly you are tricked into doing a thousand unnecessary tests. If you need surgical intervention, you must check if it is insured by the company to whom who have been dutifully paying premiums, year after year. There is zero accountability, in many cases. Babies have died in ICU units because of a random fire and no one is held to task. Female doctors on duty are raped on hospital premises, but no one is really held responsible. Doctors and nurses are underpaid, and patients are forced to overpay if they want better services. I was fortunate that when I was working in India as a freelancer, I had the foresight to pay for medical insurance, so when I needed to have a fibroid removed, I didn’t have to pay the almost Rs 1 lakh bill.