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India fact of the day
Ratio of the estimated number of fake doctors practicing in Delhi, India, to the number of real ones: 1:1
That is from Harper's Index, May 2008.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 17, 2008 at 07:40 AM in Music | Permalink
Comments
since half of medical
spending is useless
(HT: hanson)this sounds
about right.
Posted by: sa at Apr 17, 2008 7:58:19 AM
What constitutes a "fake doctor"?
I mean, are they all without medical knowledge? Do they all aim to fraud? In this particular case (India) they may or may not, but I wonder about statistics on that, since medical licensing is often a rent-seeking scam.
Posted by: liberty at Apr 17, 2008 8:13:09 AM
But more importantly, how many don't have health 'insurance?' ;-)
Posted by: Speedmaster at Apr 17, 2008 8:32:45 AM
Having spent an appreciable amount of time in India, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Mix the mysticism of Hinduism and Jainism with near-lawlessness in large swaths of the country and that's the sort of thing one can expect.
Posted by: meter at Apr 17, 2008 8:33:56 AM
How about the folks who sell herbal cures, organic vegetables and supplements for health proposes in the USA? Ginkgo biloba or saw palmetto anyone? Who does more harm real doctors or fakes?
Posted by: Floccina at Apr 17, 2008 9:16:07 AM
Fake doctors thrive their business on the lack of proper education among the people..mostly the migrant labour or villagers are their catch.In addition the lack of vigilance and no proper medical facilities help the so called doctors to mushroom in the streets of india.
Posted by: renzen at Apr 17, 2008 9:47:40 AM
I wonder how many of your "facts of the day" are real facts?
Posted by: Westner at Apr 17, 2008 9:49:01 AM
Harper's Index is always skepticism-inducing.
Posted by: Klug at Apr 17, 2008 10:34:46 AM
"Be careful with that Adlai, Leela, he's a doctor, they're very poor."
"Actually most doctors are rich."
"WHAT!? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN!? YOU'RE JOKING RIGHT?! THAT'S NOT FUNNY!?!?"
Posted by: Gil at Apr 17, 2008 10:48:41 AM
How about the folks who sell herbal cures, organic vegetables and supplements for health proposes in the USA? Ginkgo biloba or saw palmetto anyone? Who does more harm real doctors or fakes?
From what I understand, if you make any medicinal claims, you can get in serious trouble.
Usually bottles of supplements say something like "This item was traditionally used to treat upset stomach", as opposed to "This item with cure your upset stomach".
Posted by: Rex Rhino at Apr 17, 2008 1:07:29 PM
is there a reason that I don't get why this is posted under "Music"?
Posted by: Finja at Apr 17, 2008 1:43:34 PM
This is a fantastic research opportunity: Does medical education improve health care outcome?
I don't believe this has been carefully evaluated in the modern era. The fact that Prozac's own clinical trial data showed that 73% of the drug's effectiveness was placebo effect shows how important context, particularly patient belief, can affect outcome.
Here is wonderful opportunity to test the same idea with *practioners* instead of *molecules*. Assuming these non-licensed practitioners are no more greedy/uncaring/unethical than their licensed counter-parts, the two groups may achieve surprisingly similar health outcomes.
Posted by: tylerh at Apr 17, 2008 3:11:43 PM
I just read a book called Charlatan by Pope Brock that details the health care industry in American during the 1920s and 30s. Sounds about the same.
I also read somewhere that Calcutta's the most over-populated city in the world, and that it scores terribly on a number of measures (pollution, etc.). But the article compared it to New York City 100 years ago and New York was worse!
I wonder how much else we'd find that's similar in these ways.
Posted by: bryan at Apr 17, 2008 3:56:15 PM
Guess Who works in Harper's Index ? "bitter" americans ;-)
The ayurvedic/homeopathic doctor can easily counted as fake... to make it look good... 1:1 will so much better to the "bitter" americans ;-)
About 4/5 americans can speak thrice as better than they actually get the job done ;-)
- "bitter" indian :D
Posted by: DeshDrohi at Apr 17, 2008 4:21:37 PM
Seems about right. My sister in law says this is quite common in the slums and noted that a hospital was set up by a midwife who calls herself a doctor. A related problem is unscrupulous doctors in the countryside that treat symptoms rather than cure diseases so as not to cut the income stream. It has little to do with mysticism! Ethnocentric judgements aside economists would readily spot the reason for this problem. Information costs are very high relative to incomes. Never did much research in the slums of India but can say that the Indian farmer is one of the best microeconomists in the world. The survival of their families as well as themselves depends on it..
Posted by: edwardseco at Apr 18, 2008 2:41:25 AM
Anecdotal to be sure, but one man I became friendly with solicited Rupees to help his sick daughter (and she was, as I saw her.)
He wanted the money not to give her medical care, but to pay a noted shaman for his blessings.
Posted by: meter at Apr 18, 2008 12:08:17 PM
There are a lot of homeopathic and aurvedic doctors around who are not complete doctors. They still prescribe allopathic medicines and would account for a lot of the fake doctors.
Posted by: rishi at Apr 18, 2008 1:22:57 PM
