The story of health care delivery in India is one of deep-rooted inefficiency and failure. Government-provided health care is, at least in theory, widely available and cheap, and the personnel are generally qualified. But even the poorest Indians do not use government health care facilities, opting instead for the much more expensive, unregulated, and sometimes even deficient private providers. This is not because of some type of irrationality: people are unable to get any care from government facilities, which are plagued by absenteeism.
