Most people believe that the reason for the sorry state of affairs in Indian healthcare today is the shortage of doctors. The standard wisdom is that there are too many patients and not enough doctors, based on the "recommended doctor-patient ratio" by the WHO. This is why the standard knee-jerk response is to create more medical colleges, and churn out new doctors; and to train AYUSH doctors to provide allopathic treatment for Indians. I think this is a broken model. For one thing, to provide high-quality medical education to train good doctors is difficult and expensive, and takes a long time.
However, just creating more medical graduate doctors doesn't solve the problem - it actually exacerbates it! The real issue today is not the number - it's how they are distributed. This is why there are way too many specialists in cities like Mumbai, and not enough in the villages. Since you…
