DISCRIMINATION BY CGHS

Discrimination by CGHS

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

While right to healthcare and medical facilities should be seen as an integral part of the right to life for all, the babus have ensured that world class healthcare, diagnostic and other medical facilities at posh private nursing homes, hospitals, healthcare centers at Government cost is available only to them, their families, their political boss MPs and other so-called VIPs and their families. The nursing home facilities in Government hospitals are also mostly cornered by such higher strata beneficiaries.

Medical specialists attached to the CGHS dispensaries, if they happen to be of some calibre, remain unavailable on their slotted schedule, as for months on end they are away on what is termed as VIP duties -- attending to the VIPs and their families.

There also exists a complex classification and sub-classification of CGHS beneficiaries in various categories, based on which the scale of facilities admissible to them under the scheme is decided. The parameters and norms differ from beneficiary to beneficiary, depending on the scale of pay or pension, the position he holds or held in the Government, etc.

What is most appalling is the fact that the pensioner-beneficiaries of autonomous bodies are not treated at par with their counterpart retired from purely Government service, particularly in the matter of grant of credit facilities in the recognised private healthcare centres, nursing homes, etc. Are they not as precariously placed both health-wise and resources-wise as their counterparts who retired from "purely Government service"?

The plight of an autonomous body pensioner, suffering from age-induced infirmities and debilitating diseases, is that he has to run around complying with absurd formalities, placating babus, getting department's permission before and after the treatment, incurring all expenses from his own slender resources on the spot in the first instance irrespective of the enormity of the amount of expenditure involved even in emergent circumstances. . Then irrespective of whether his health permits or not, he has to do several rounds first to get his reimbursement bill on the prescribed forms verified from the treating doctor, then to the department for its scrutiny only to get reimbursement of completely watered-down bill after several months of making repeated rounds to the department from which he retired. Besides this he has to get his permanent CGHS token card revalidated every calendar year before it begins, the fact that he had already made full payment for availing CGHS facilities for the whole life- at the same rate and scale applicable to his counterpart in the government service- on his retirement itself, not withstanding. The babus of his department with abnormally swelled egos take sadistic pleasure in retrenching the claimed amount on most flimsy grounds; feigning ignorance of the Delhi high court verdict that mandates full reimbursement of the expenditure incurred on the medical treatment, and that too after the claim is subjected to several absurd objections. The autonomous body pensioner-beneficiaries of CGHS have made several representations to the authorities of the Health Ministry including those to the Hon’ble Minister but all have fallen on deaf ears so far and the victims of this blatant discrimination continue to live under the ever-lengthening shadow of fear and insecurity. Even ventilating the grievances through media could not yield any positive results for these unfortunate CGHS pensioner-beneficiaries whose only sin is that they had retired from autonomous bodies. It would thus be apparent that the denial of credit facility and cashless service by private recognized hospitals to the CSIR and other autonomous body pensioners who are CGHS beneficiaries is a cruel, inhuman and heartless joke still being perpetuated on this particular section of hapless senior citizens in the twilight of their life even though their counterpart retirees from the government have been availing the facility for several years now.

As respected senior citizens of this country, all pensioners should be treated at par, particularly in the matter of healthcare and medical facilities. Age and the age alone should be the criterion to determine the priority in the matter of extending the benefits to a pensioner-beneficiary irrespective of the post and the grade he was in at the time of his retirement.