An unhealthy health scheme
The healthcare and medical facilities provided under the Central Government Health Scheme suffer from several anomalies. While the right to healthcare and medical facilities should be seen as an integral part of the right to life, bureaucrats have ensured that hassle-free and quality healthcare at good private nursing homes and hospitals at Government's expense is available only to MPs, senior Government employees, pensioners and their families. The nursing home facilities in Government hospitals, too, are mostly cornered by the high and mighty. Medical specialists attached to CGHS dispensaries are unavailable on the weekdays that are slotted for their visit as they are away on 'VIP duties' for months. There exists a complex classification of CGHS beneficiaries. The parameters depend on the stage and scale of pay or pension, the position one holds or held in the Government, whether one is an employee or pensioner of some 'purely governmental department' or Central autonomous body. It is astounding that the pensioners among the beneficiaries of autonomous bodies are not treated at par with their counterparts who retired from the 'purely Government service' -- particularly in matters of grant of credit facilities. Even while the babus perpetuate and practice such blatant discrimination, or create provisions for it in the rulebooks, they are not held accountable for the miseries caused to the beneficiaries of the scheme who are some autonomous body's pensioner. In the evening of their lives, suffering from age-induced infirmities and debilitating diseases, they have to run around complying with absurd formalities, placating highly inflated egos of the babus concerned. They also have to get their department's permission before and after the treatment, incur all expenses on the spot in the first instance irrespective of the enormity of the amount of expenditure, make repeated trips to the hospital for getting the bills verified by the CGHS medical authorities then to the department from which they have retired. They are subjected to this unreasonable discrimination only for the sin of their having retired from an autonomous body. Is the life of a Class IV employee in any way less valuable than that of a senior class I officer? As the senior citizens of this country, all pensioners should be treated at par, particularly in the matter of healthcare and medical facilities.