Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s proposal to levy a five percent service tax on all medical facilities provided by hospitals with 25 or more beds, which includes the doctor’s fee and sundry diagnostic tests, is nothing short of a cruel joke.

Let’s not forget, the government has been progressively shirking its responsibility of providing public healthcare services. This has led to an astronomical rise in both private healthcare facilities and the cost to avail it.So much so that the private medicare now caters to 70 percent of the country’s need.

A service tax on medicare is unheard of anywhere in the world. What prompted the FM to think of such an obnoxious step? The only logical answer is that he is doing the insurance firms’ bidding. ‘Scare the wit out of the people by hiking the healthcare cost and they will rush to the insurance guys’ is a strategy only the private companies can think of to boost their business, given the huge opportunity that exists. Only one to two percent of the population has any kind of medical insurance at present.

Are you going to sit back and watch the government fool around with our public policies, which may create a US-like situation before the Obama administration intervened? Or are you going to stand up and resist? In case, you opt for the second option, we list out the contact numbers and email ids of the FM and his revenue secretary. Register your protests with them.

Pranab Mukerjee
Finance Minister
Ministry of Finance
North Block
New Delhi
Ph. 011 - 23094399, 23092810
Fax.011 - 23093289   
pkm@sansad.nic.in

Sunil Mitra,
Revenue Secretary
Ministry of Finance
North Block
New Delhi
Ph. 011 - 23092653, 23092111
Fax.011 - 23092719   
rsecy@nic.in 

***FM's mails are bouncing back.

So to join the campaign call or email:

R Gopalan, secretary(economic afffairs)
email: secy-dea@nic.in
phone: 011-23092611

Kaushik Basu, chief economic adviser to PM
email: cea@nic.in
phone: 011-23094818

L M Vas, special secretary, FM
email: lm.vas@nic.in
phone:011-23093183