Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Tuesday announced that a consensus has been reached with agitating doctors over the Right to Health Bill, which was passed last month.
Doctors, especially private doctors, had been demanding the withdrawal of the controversial Bill passed in the state Assembly on March 28 as they believed that once implemented, the law will result in increased bureaucratic interference in their functioning.
The protesting doctors considered the Bill’s implementation to be an impractical approach to healthcare and a potential burden on private hospitals, adding that it will bring little benefit to the people of the state.
Under the law, every resident has the right to avail free of cost treatment along with ‘emergency treatment’ without prepayment at any health institution in the state. Neither government nor private hospitals nor doctors can refuse a person seeking emergency treatment.
Breaking the news on Twitter, chief minister Gehlot said that he is happy that an agreement was reached between the state government and the doctors on the RTH Bill.
“I am happy that finally an agreement has been reached between the government and the doctors on the Right to Health Bill and Rajasthan has become the first state in the country to implement Right to Health. I hope that the doctor-patient relationship will remain the same in future as well. #RightToHealth”, Gehlot said in a tweet in Hindi.
Earlier on Tuesday, a delegation of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Rajasthan, Private Hospital and Nursing Home Society (PHNHS), and United Private Clinics and Hospitals of Rajasthan (UPCHAR) reached an eight-point agreement with the Gehlot government.
A major demand of the protesting doctors was accepted and that is why they withdrew the protest. Their primary demand was that private hospitals that have not taken any benefit from the government in the form of land or building at subsidised rates should be kept outside the ambit of the RTH Bill.
“An agreement with the government has been arrived at. The private sector has completely been freed from the RTH Bill. The government will implement it from its resources and institutions. We have converted our rally into a ‘Vijay Rally’ and will hold a general body meeting to call off the agitation formally,” news agency PTI quoted the secretary of the Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Society Dr Vijay Kapoor as saying.
“Now 98 per cent of the private hospitals have come out of it, so why should we continue the protest now,” Sunil Chugh, President, IMA Rajasthan, told The Indian Express.
