During December of 2015, I traveled to Bangalore, India in order to volunteer in the hospital of Columbia Asia under the Chief of Reproductive Medicine. During my experience, I was given the opportunity to observe and aid in life changing procedures, among other menial tasks, such as intrauterine insemination, embryo transfers and tubal testing in order to promote reproduction. While familiarizing myself with the medical world in a different country, I picked up on certain differences between medicine in the United States and that in India.
1. Public Health
Many areas in India lag far behind developed nations in terms of Public Health with clean drinking water, adequate nutrition, sanitation and access to healthcare being primary issues. This problem is only becoming increasingly worse due to a growing population and lack of funding towards the cause.
2. Health Insurance
In America health insurance is mandatory. In fact a penalty must be paid if for some reason you choose not to get it. Also, employers in the US, as per government guidelines, are required to provide health insurance to their employees. None of the above holds true in India, where health insurance is not a requirement. In fact seventy percent of Indians pay for healthcare out of their own pockets.
3. Nature of Healthcare
In the United States, healthcare is largely controlled by the government and offers programs such as "Obamacare" which makes quality healthcare accessible and affordable. Consumer protections, regulations, subsidies, taxes, insurance exchanges and other such reforms go into making the system work. Whereas in India although a public sector exists, the private sector predominates with better medical facilities. Because the private medical facilities are often expensive, though, many settle for mediocre care rather than quality.
4. Differentiation in states
The US is a federation of various states, each of which has different regulations. Hence, health insurance rules and provisions differ from state to state. India, on the other hand, is a republic and the same rules apply across all states. Therefore a health insurance policy will have the same rules and regulations across the country. This unification ends up being detrimental.
