A man walks into a ‘five-star hospital’ in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, with chest pain. After a battery of tests, he is told he has a blockage. It is ‘critical’. Surgery is ‘immediate’. The estimate – Rs 12 lakh.
His fixed deposits tremble. EMIs march past his eyes. SIPs look suddenly suicidal. But life, he decides, is non-negotiable. He signs the consent form.
Then comes the fateful column – occupation. He writes – ED on the dotted line. And suddenly the hospital’s pulse changes.
Juice and special medical team
Miraculously, juice is offered by a nurse. A dietitian materialises with grave concern, advising him what to eat and what to avoid. A ‘special team’ of doctors is assembled. More tests are ordered – extensively, meticulously, almost affectionately.
Soon, a senior specialist arrives with revised wisdom. No surgery required – medicines will do. The blockage, it appears, was interpretational.
The hospital assumed ED meant the Enforcement Directorate. In reality, the patient worked in the Education Department. The scalpel retreated at the sight of the two dreaded letters.
Calibrated ethics
This episode would be comic if it were not so disturbing. The first diagnosis was urgent surgery. The second, after ED was read as Enforcement Directorate, was conservative treatment. What changed? Not the arteries, but the risk assessment.
Corporate hospitals speak the language of care but operate within the arithmetic of commerce. There are packages for everything – cardiac, neuro, preventive, and occasionally panic. A frightened patient, confronted with the spectre of sudden death, does not negotiate. He complies.
But when the institution suspects that the patient might belong to an agency capable of auditing accounts and freezing assets, prudence blossoms. Ethics, in this case, required enforcement.
Health policy – spectacle without scrutiny
This is not merely about one hospital in Ghaziabad. It is about an ecosystem where tertiary health care is dominated by private players and oversight is either timid or distracted.
Under Narendra Modi, health care has been branded with impressive energy. The flagship Ayushman Bharat scheme is advertised as transformative, and millions carry cards promising financial protection.
If a major surgery can be recommended so casually – and withdrawn so quickly when the patient’s perceived clout changes – the problem is structural. Transparent pricing remains elusive. Mandatory second opinions for high-value procedures are not uniformly enforced. Clinical audits lack teeth.
Meanwhile, the lobbies gleam. The billing counters hum. The brochures promise world-class care.
Fear as regulator
The most revealing part of the story is, the hospital behaved responsibly only when it feared consequences. Imagine if every patient could command that caution.
Until genuine oversight replaces selective fear, patients will continue to navigate two anxieties – illness and invoice. In Ghaziabad, one man was spared a scalpel because of a bureaucratic misunderstanding. Others, less ambiguously employed, may not be so fortunate.
In today’s India, survival may depend less on the state of your heart – and more on the abbreviation beside your name.
