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Free Medical Care and Consumer Protection
Banerjee, Arunabha Deepak Agrawal, Aniket
Banerjee, Arunabha
Deepak Agrawal, Aniket
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n194co242.pdf
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This paper will examine the question of whether patients, who receive free medical care, whether from private charitable or governmental hospitals, can claim rights as ‘consumers’ under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. The issue will be discussed from a constitutional perspective as well as that of the law of torts. This right has evolved in the United States. Since the patient rights movement of the 1970s, patients have received more protection than consumers in other circumstances. For example, while the latter may have access to some of their credit information, patients are entitled to all the information in their medical records because the information belongs to them (15). Further, a series of court decisions have recognised patients’ rights to emergency care (16) and culminated in state and federal legislation requiring hospitals with emergency departments to provide care to patients with emergency medical conditions regardless of insurance coverage or the ability to pay (17). This is the only right to medical care enjoyed by all Americans (18). The right to emergency care is an entitlement unique in common law and it is justified entirely by patient need. Not even housing or education assumes equal importance in the law (19). Recent developments starting from the 1980s in the US have also seen a transition in favour of managed care organisations from a fee-based service where even the recipients of free medical care get their rights converted into those of private enforcement (20). The earlier fiduciary relationship has now metamorphosed into a contractual obligation wherein the poorer sections can assert themselves as consumers even more (21). The corporatisation of the previous scheme has actually resulted in providing a more systematised expression to the grievances of these people whose problems can now be settled through an internal redressal mechanism through appointment of ombudsmen (22). Clearly our system would do well to take a leaf out of the US book with regard to a greater recognition and enforceability of rights of such patients in an attempt to usher in a new era of consumer protection.
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2011-10
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With permission of the license/copyright holder