The mercantile spirit seems to have seeped so deep into our country’s pores that we have begun accepting it as part of our lives, allowing it to eat into our well-being. Worse, we at times actively participate in it.

The polemic surrounding the doctors and insurance companies is a case in point. It is not our intention to paint all professionals with the same brush. However, some of our doctors were perhaps absent when their colleagues took the Hippocratic Oath and we all know what the odds are on them one day having an attack of conscience. And lawyers are no better.

When you go to see a lawyer – which usually happens in times of distress – his/her main concern seems to be the number of digits on your cheque rather than your complaint or alleged offence. At times, some lawyers even ask you if you need a receipt before they decide how much to charge you. Read: a receipt costs 15% more. VAT wasn’t introduced by lawyers so you can’t expect them to be responsible for it. Also, if the Mauritius Revenue Authority has to scrape a piece of your lawyer’s fees, it has to come out of your own pocket.

Now with the doctors, the polemic is even more saddening as we go to them when our health is failing us or even when our lives are at stake. And it is normally the agony in which this takes place that some of our doctors thrive on to make of their profession a lucrative and unethical business. Some of the clinics may be party to the business but so are we as patients. Those of us who accept that the doctor charges more when we are insured than if we were not. Those of us who do not care what the bill of the clinic looks like as long as we are not forking anything out of our pockets. And those of us who do not sanction the doctors who are reputed for having turned into business practitioners should all plead guilty.

Many of us are too shortsighted to realise that whatever we are signing for comes out of our pockets directly or indirectly. Insurance companies are not a charity – oh far from it! So, if we have been encouraging the practice of doctors who dig deep into our insurance companies’ coffers, we have indirectly been working towards increasing our own insurance premium and that of our compatriots.

Insurance companies have a list of 13 clinics and over 100 doctors – general practitioners and specialists in all fields from paediatrics to dentistry – on their approved list of doctors and private hospitals. These – we presume – are doctors and clinics that are prepared to play the game of honesty and transparency by having their fees regulated. As patients, we might perhaps benefit by encouraging them. As for the doctors threatening not to accept insurance cards as payment, they had better begin by explaining to us why they are not on that list. Whether their fees are paid in cash – without a receipt at times – or through our insurance, they still come out of our pockets. So, the doctors are not fighting the insurance companies; they are fighting us – the ones directly or indirectly footing the bill!

weekly@lasentinelle.mu