Heart Surgery for $1 and a Quarter!
05 August, 2005
Sounds like impossible, right? Check out a post by CochinPrince in his blog.
It is worth quoting from his pages:
It is worth quoting from his pages:
Twenty-year-old Prasanna, a farmer from Tumkur district of Karnataka, would have normally wasted away after he was stricken with a heart disease.
However, a model health insurance scheme has provided a ray of hope to thousands like him, besides setting a splendid example of government-private partnership.
Prasanna underwent an open heart surgery for Rs 60, the annual premium for the Yeshasvini health scheme launched in the cooperative sector in 2003.
This quiet health revolution reaching out to the have-nots has resulted in medical treatment to more than 85,000 farmers in the last two years.
As many as 25,000 farmers have undergone various kinds of operations, including those of the heart, brain, stomach, eyes and the gall bladder, during this period.
Starting from the 800-bedded super-speciality Narayana Hrudalaya Hospital on the outskirts of Bangalore, it now reaches out to farmers through 170 hospitals across the state.
The scheme came into being ironically at a function where its originator — the Hrudalaya hospital founder and heart surgeon, Dr Devi Shetty — was invited to endorse a milk product. Dr Shetty, a foreign trained cardiologist who went on to become Mother Teresa's personal cardiac surgeon and then an unabashed advocate for providing modern health care to the poor, asked his hosts the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) to support a path-breaking idea.
What he had to offer to the KMC's Managing Director was this: "I will extend health benefits to all your two million employees for just Rs 5 a month"
More...
However, a model health insurance scheme has provided a ray of hope to thousands like him, besides setting a splendid example of government-private partnership.
Prasanna underwent an open heart surgery for Rs 60, the annual premium for the Yeshasvini health scheme launched in the cooperative sector in 2003.
This quiet health revolution reaching out to the have-nots has resulted in medical treatment to more than 85,000 farmers in the last two years.
As many as 25,000 farmers have undergone various kinds of operations, including those of the heart, brain, stomach, eyes and the gall bladder, during this period.
Starting from the 800-bedded super-speciality Narayana Hrudalaya Hospital on the outskirts of Bangalore, it now reaches out to farmers through 170 hospitals across the state.
The scheme came into being ironically at a function where its originator — the Hrudalaya hospital founder and heart surgeon, Dr Devi Shetty — was invited to endorse a milk product. Dr Shetty, a foreign trained cardiologist who went on to become Mother Teresa's personal cardiac surgeon and then an unabashed advocate for providing modern health care to the poor, asked his hosts the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) to support a path-breaking idea.
What he had to offer to the KMC's Managing Director was this: "I will extend health benefits to all your two million employees for just Rs 5 a month"
More...
Comments:
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Great blog I hope we can work to build a better health care system as we are in a major crisis and health insurance is a major aspect to many.
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# posted by 
: 4:07 AM, January 21, 2006
: 4:07 AM, January 21, 2006 << Home
