India, Aug. 31 -- A patient cured is a customer lost also. Insurance advertisements never admit this, hospital brochures never print it. Illness, in India, is not merely a misfortune, but a perennial resource to be harnessed, monetised and prolonged.

A conspiracy everyone denies, and no one disrupts: the symbiotic alliance amongst insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and practitioners.

Insurers profit from premia collected today and claims delayed or denied tomorrow. Hospitals, particularly the large corporate chains which dominate metro healthcare, are answerable to their shareholders and quarterly targets, and that is why unnecessary diagnostics, extended ICU stays and needless surgeries performed to be safe have become quite...