Healthcare in India also has one very negative aspect which is that more than half of the doctors have qualified due to some form of caste based affirmative action. More than 50% seats in Indian Medical colleges are reserved for "lower castes." It's much easier for a less hard working/bright student to get into the college if he belongs to the lower caste which reduces the quality of doctors so much that a lot of people refuse to get treated by doctors who have lower caste surnames. Atleast in America you are guaranteed you have mostly competent folks treating you, hard to do that in India without doing background checks on the caste of the doctor as well.
How is this any different from saying you would avoid a black/Hispanic/minority doctor in the United States? The US also has affirmative action for medical schools. If anything this problem would be worse in the US, since it's harder to determine race by name here.
Your comment reads as thinly veiled casteism/racism.
You can go with doctors with Jewish/Asian last names - that way you chance to hit affirmative action doctor are pretty minimal.
PS I personally never thought about it that way and it’s probably silly to filter like that for routine care but may make sense for high risk surgeries when you can’t do due diligence other way.
The qualifying exams for MBBS degree is the same for everyone. A huge percentage of medical seats are literally purchased by wealthy parents for their kids. Yet the concern is always about low caste physicians, not nepotistic physicians.
The exam is the same, but the scores required vary by a large margin based on if you are in a reserved category or open category.
I'm not saying that someone with a lower exam score cannot be a better doctor than someone with a higher score, but I would assume there would be a strong correlation
I am not talking about the entrance exam. I am talking about the final exam you need to pass to graduate. It is the same for everyone.
Once again, most of the students who qualify in the entrance exam with a lower score are the middle-high income class, donations and payments based upper caste students.
In all my years in India, not once has anyone complained about the upper caste doctors who have literally purchased a seat in medical school, including yourself. Their only concern is caste. The racism is very loud and very clear.
You would be a fool to go to any doctor who has a degree from a random private university in India. So you only go to doctors from reputed govt. colleges like say Maulana Azad or AIIMS where you can't just buy the degree. But here the issue is reservation which is as bad of a problem. So vetting out quota doctors is required here if you want proper treatment. You are saying they all qualify the passing exams on the university? But is there no difference in someone getting barely passing marks to other student getting distinction? I have heard professors giving grace marks to SC/ST students just because they fear being slapped with draconian caste discrimination cases if they fail the undeserving student. If you look at the topmost doctors they are all of unreserved category, now this is not some "racism" but in reality it shows that merit wins in the long run.
