Health Insurance coverage

As we started seeking opinions in Bangalore we realized how foolish we were to rely solely on our employer to cover us for health insurance. Since our employment contracts were not with the Indian subsidiary, we would not be covered by health insurance here.
Since the transplant would not be done in Germany, the health insurance provider refused to bear the cost of the procedures. Fair enough.

The cost estimates in front of us were big enough to teach us a lesson for future.
We got ourselves health insurance coverage immediately - a very negligible amount for me that excluded the known kidney disease. But a decent cover for V.

Hopefully we won't need to claim it.
 

What's better? Who knows -

A message on the voice mail informed us that a regular blood test had discovered a potential "kidney failure" in S. The appointment with the kidney specialist couple of days later resulted in the bombshell - " your kidney is functioning at around 17%. Nothing can be done for this. You will need dialysis soon and eventually a transplant. There is no medication for this situation. Dietary changes don't help. We will observe you and then take a decision when time comes. In the meantime please have some vitamins and EPO for the anemia. You should consider doing a biopsy but it doesn't give clear results all the time."

We decided to take a 2nd opinion and met the specialists in Manipal Hospital, Bangalore. The 1st discussion went something like this " I will not ask you to do the tests which have just been done in Germany however I want you to do the following (tests prescribed). Your creatinine value is 4.57 right now and is definitely a cause of concern but I don't think you need dialysis right now. Don't worry things will be ok. Let's do all the investigations and decide on the next steps. In the meantime, please cut down on your salt intake and avoid dairy products. If you have pulses often avoid them once a while. BP is ok...maybe we will do the biopsy on Tuesday ( we met on Saturday )"

The end result didn't change - transplant was required and was done however the 1st meetings with the specialists in West and East clearly brings out the difference in the "people" aspect. The other important difference which came out was that there is different approaches when it comes to Dialysis - the doctors in the West tend to prefer "early" dialysis approach while in the East prefer to "delay" dialysis as much as possible.