Many
people in India think that paying Insurance Premium is a waste of
money. So much so that some even stop paying premiums for compulsory
insurance – Motor Insurance. Lesson needs to be learned from cases that
happen not just in our nation but worldwide.
The
following is a true incident that happened in China in May, 2011. The
moral from it is self explanatory. Wu Yuanbi, a 53-year-old migrant
worker living in Chongqing municipality, had declined for years to buy
medical insurance because she wanted to save money. Result - Rather than pay medical bills, she cut into her own belly with a kitchen knife to perform self surgery.
Wu,
who moved with her family to Chongqing in 1989 in search of
better-paying jobs, has been suffering for about 13 years from
Budd-Chiari syndrome, a chronic condition that caused her stomach to
fill with fluid. In 2002, she and her family pooled their savings to pay
for a procedure that resulted in the removal of 25 kilograms of water
from her midsection. But a relapse of the condition followed and the
family found itself too poor to pay 50,000 yuan ($7,686) for a second
operation.
It
was once common for poor rural families to go bankrupt after they had
paid high medical costs. But not anymore. With the introduction of
health insurance policies, some being highly subsidized by the
government, basic healthcare has become more accessible to rural people.
Most
of us can hardly afford to bear the full cost of medical treatment.
Whereas the premiums charged by most policies are very reasonable. Hope
lessons are learned!!