Nimesoma hii reply kwa Star na nakubaliana nayo kabisaa...................
Kenyans must understand this simple basic truth - private hospitals are businesses like any other. While they offer life-saving services, they have costs and expenses just like hotels, matatus, or even bars. Can you get onto somebody's matatu even when rushing to an emergency and then refuse/fail to pay the fare? Food is a basic necessity, but can you get into the Hilton, eat and refuse or fail to pay? Can you walk into Nation Centre, pick a few papers and then fail to pay? Can you take your child to an expensive private school and cite the right to education as the reason for his mandatory admission? What am I saying? That Kenyans must recognise that behind every private hospital are investors and shareholders who have invested millions of shillings to offer services to people WHO CAN PAY. I find these stories of families who let their relatives to stay in private facilities for months on end only to complain that they can't pay when the patient passes on very suspicious. After emergency care is offered in the first instance and the patient is stabilised, why don't they transport the patient to a facility they can afford, even a public one? Private health facilities only have a duty of care to offer emergency services to non-paying patients. Every syringe, every ampule, every bandage costs money so if say hundreds don't pay for how long will that private facility survive? Patients and their families must always balance the care the patient needs with the resources and insurance they have. As a minimum, every one should have NHIF and maybe a second small insurance package. Private health institutions, including mission hospitals, are a critical component of the health care system in this country and we cannot afford to have them collapse.