Medical practice in India is under intense scrutiny, and hardly a day goes by without another scandal, about poor treatment meted out to patients, absence of doctors from the workplace in rural areas, fraud in the medical education system, and so on. With rising costs, access to modern medicine is becoming a challenge, and there is little assurance of quality services and patients feel vulnerable and powerless; a real ‘caveat emptor’. This is against the backdrop of a massive expansion in health services both in the private and in the public sector, the promise of increased government funding, reforms in medical education, and other policy initiatives with the potential to deliver equitable access to healthcare by all as suggested by the recent High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for India (HLEG)