Health care is social service or a business opportunity?
I believe it is both. It used to be more of the former; now, it is getting to be more of the latter.
I fail to understand why it should be one at the cost of the other. It is naive to expect individual practitioners, business houses or industry at large to work purely on altruistic notion. But when it is translated into life as service restricted to a social segment, it raises fundamental questions to a society built on democratic, socialistic principles.
Question is are these principles are ideals that we revert to at our convenience, or guiding principles? Is it too early for a social equilibrium? or we lack political will? or it is a convenient social hypocracy?
Gandhi's talisman
"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."
- One of the last notes left behind by Gandhi in 1948, expressing his deepest social thought.
