Thanks for the info.
@libertybele - I had to hunt for the pic I wanted to post in my initial reply to you about India - but this was a shot I took while walking into the post-surgery ward at the government-run hospital to visit a church member who had surgery for a hernia. The ward is co-ed, and behind the beds on the floor on both sides, runs a 4" trench in the cement that has all the urine, feces, and other fluids running down towards drains in at the near end of the shot that go down and exit the building onto the street below. (We were 4 stories up).
I cannot describe the smell. And, there are no bathrooms there. People just squat over the trench and go.
Now this was the RECOVERY room post-surgery of a big major city in India. The hospitals are not excellent there despite whatever it is you may have seen. It is possible there is a private hospital serving the upper castes that the documentary crew was taken to, but hospitals for the general public - are nothing short of abysmal.
This is the private hospital in the same city as the government hospital in the pic above. The facilities are remarkably better, but still it would be condemned here in the States as unsanitary and overcrowded.
You cannot see it well in this shot, but at a private hospital in India, when you are allowed into the building (as Christians and low castes, we had to sign in at a table out in the parking lot and be escorted into the reception area in a specific doorway away from the main entrance so the higher castes would not be infected with our bad karma) - you then proceed to the pay desk - and you pay for whatever service you need and the prices are listed on a board there in the back like a fast-food restaurant.
If you do not know what your problem is, you pay in advance to see a doctor. He diagnoses you, and then sends you back to the pay desk with a note describing whatever tests or treatment he thinks you need and you pay in advance once again for those. Once you pay - you get a receipt and go into a waiting area where you have to show your receipt before they administer your test or treatment. This follows for follow-up treatment and medicines. You pay in advance and you pay ala carte.
There is no insurance there for most of the population.