Health Care, Schmealth Care. Take a Look at India and Covet

I’m not sure how to tactfully write this but I’ll give it my best shot. When we told people we would be traveling in India one of the comments I heard was “But you’ll get sick!”

And truthfully, I was rather nervous that I’d spend my vacation with two weeks of Delhi Belly but was assured by my mother that she would, once again, take care of me and save me from picking up any nasty treats. I guess you’d say she’d have my back (side). (Pardon my humor). She assured me that Americans really could travel to India very comfortably and never encounter any bouts of the dreaded dysentery.

India isn’t particularly special when it comes to the “don’t drink the water” policy—in most countries outside of the U.S., Canada and Europe it’s not safe to drink the water. Even in industrialized places such as Hong Kong and Taiwan it’s not a good idea to drink tap water and you should be careful with bottled water because it’s not uncommon for the water to be bottled straight from the local tap then sold as “safe.”

My parents’ apartment building claimed to have purified water but my Mom had her own water purifier in the kitchen just in case and all of our water came from that. Most of the hotels we stayed at—Sheratons and such—claimed to have safe water but I was extra careful and drank bottled. You don’t want to spend your trip to India running from bathroom to bathroom now do you?

And while my siblings who have visited India have been fairly free from intestinal issues (except for the fools who ate at that street vendor’s cart in Delhi and paid for it with their stomachs) India wasn’t quite so kind to me. I don’t think it was anything that I ate or that I picked up any bugs, I’ve just always had a wimpy, weak stomach that quivers over all sorts of issues (did I ever tell you how sick I got when I got married? Horrors!) so I think it was a combination of nerves, heat, occasional dehydration, spicy food and whatever else caught me off guard. Let’s just say for the last week I lived with lots of Immodium safely tucked in my purse, taken at regular intervals. Immodium is my friend.

Part of my fears centered around eastern toilets or “squatty potties” as they’re called and I lived in horror of encountering one at close range For those who may not be familiar with squatty potties they’re simply a hole in the ground. No seat, no plumbing, no water, no toilet paper—just a hole. The user (i.e. woman) is supposed to stand or squat overhead and do her job elegantly enough not to defile her sari and I haven’t a clue how it’s accomplished. I get a little squeamish with public restrooms in general so the thought of having to make a pit stop and experience this side of India was terrifying to contemplate.

But the apartment and hotels we stayed at had great bathrooms so I was able to avoid the whole squatty potty issue until one day on the way to the airport. We were heading up to Hyderabad and suddenly I knew that I needed to make a stop (trying to put it delicately here). I asked Sampath to find a restroom and I was cringing, thinking that we’d stop at a petrol station and I’d finally have to deal with the whole eastern toilet thing and complete my Indian cultural experience.

But lo and behold Sampath pulled up to a luxury hotel and the tall doorman in a white uniform with red epaulettes and a gold turban opened the door to a bathroom with white marble floors inlaid with black onyx, gold fixtures, floor to ceiling mahogany stall doors and baskets of laundered towels on the marble counters next to alabaster bowls of cool water and floating jasmine.

Heh. Talk about your lucky day. I believe the score is Michelle: 1, Squatty Potty: 0.

But you may not merely be interested in Indian bathrooms and gastrointestinal traumas, you may also be curious about the Indian health system. A couple days after our 30 hours of flight a pain started building in my calf. Not bad, but it got worse each day and when I mentioned it to Mom she reacted as a typical mom would and suggested I was about to die from blood clots in my legs. Or something like that.

Anyway, she said I should see a doctor while I was there and I resisted because who wants to spend a day or two of their vacation spending tons of money chasing down doctors in a foreign country? On my “List of Things to Do” it was right below “try out a squatty potty.”

But Mom being Mom she pressured until I agreed and I will never look at U.S. health care the same. EVER.

First off, we took an auto rickshaw from the apartment in the Koramangula district to the office in the Indiranager District which was a four story building tucked in between other urban shops. On the upper floors was the mission office and on the first floor was a local health clinic so we literally stopped in at the clinic on our way to the office.

I walked into the small office where four women with saris sat behind the reception desk shuffling paper work and answering phones. In the adjoining waiting room were about fifteen chairs waiting for patients to fill them and as we entered, a pretty woman approached us before we got to the reception desk. My mother (doing her Mom Job so well) stepped up and explained what was going on with my leg and the woman asked us to have a seat in one of the chairs.

Apparently she was one of the doctors who worked there and after we’d sat for all of—oh, I don’t know, thirty or forty seconds—another door opened and a handsome man in dark slacks and a white shirt came out to meet us. He ushered us into his office, introduced himself as Doctor Manohm in charmingly accented yet perfect English, then had us sit down to tell our story a second time.

He then did an examination on my leg, explained why it was probably nothing more than a strained muscle and would go away in a few days, prescribed a simple muscle relaxant then wrote his personal mobile number on the prescription, saying that if we were to have any more troubles or if the problem were to get worse that we were to call him directly and he’d take care of us.

When we left his office, the visit now clocking in at about seven or eight minutes, we went to the reception desk, I asked how much the visit cost then paid my 200 rupees cash before exiting the office.

That’s approximately $4. For the whole visit. No really, I lie not.

My mother slipped and hurt herself a year or so ago and after all the MRIs, scans and tests they ran on her to make sure she was okay she was bruised and sore but the whole thing took less than an hour or two and she spent a total of $140.

Before my parents return to the U.S. this summer they plan on having full physicals, complete with blood work, scans, stress tests, brakes, air filters and all their fluid levels checked at a local clinic that caters to expat American health care and they’ll spend less than $100 per person for the whole process.

Now I know health care is a hot topic right now and that there are all sorts of folks out there arguing over whether we should have nationalized health care like our Canadian friends or our European neighbors across the way but I will tell you that there is something wrong in our country when a visit to a doctor for a sore leg costs you hundreds of dollars and a day’s worth of your time.

And while there is something seriously wrong with health care in the U.S. I’m sick of hearing how great the Canadian system is because frankly, I don’t buy that either. More taxes and longer lines are not my idea of improvement so what I’m really wondering is why on earth more people aren’t pointing to India and saying “THIS is what we need!”

Now I know things aren’t quite as simple as turning U.S. health care into a copy of the Indian system and I know that the U.S. health care system excels India in specialized procedures and rare treatments but why on earth can’t we have our simple, preventative and basic health care based on Asian systems? Are we so Euro-centric to think that the west is the way to go on this? Because I’m just not feeling it after my experience.

We had some health care issues in the family last fall and when all was over we spent about $6000 after insurance. We could have flown the patient to India to stay with my parents and had the same work done safely there and saved nearly $4000—all with care that is considered to be as good as we have in the west.

What is wrong with us and why isn’t Obama talking about India more? Geesh!

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