[redbean]

We are short of doctors!

Our university can only produce 200 doctors annually. And the supply of doctors is anaemic, must be affected by our 2 child policy that we cannot produce more doctors. Or all the straight As and straight Bs students were not good enough. So now we are recruiting doctors by the planeloads from third world countries or doctors with degrees from third world countries.

Our medical facilities have been expanding in leaps and bounds. Our needs for doctors, nurses and other medical professionals must also increase. Somehow I got the impression that nobody notice this. And now we have to import all the great doctors from all over the world.

Actually hor, if we know we need so many doctors hor, we can increase the intake of medical students hor, then we got no doctor no enough problem you know. QED.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Another dangerous proposition!

I was greeted by an article in ST by Salma Khalik suggesting insurance coverage for the 85 and above. With all good intention, she made many good reasonings and suggestions on why this group needs insurance coverage and how it could be done.

Why is this frightening? Money flying away again. This kind of help, is asking people to take your money for your own good. Please, no more help of such kinds. Please, I am screaming, shouting, no more compulsion or any kind to take the people's money away. I know my kpkb is in vain. This is a sounding board to test whether the docile masses will bite or protest. If not, be prepared, another scheme may come your way. Compulsory insurance scheme for the above 85s. Great, all grounds covered. More money in the lockup.

For goodness sake, if one is 85, prepare to leave. Our body is not built to last forever. We are not meant to be here forever. What the shit does one want to live that long for when nothing works? Want another pair of corneas, another pair of lungs, another heart, another stomach? At that age, people shall be contented to live the remaining part of their lives peacefully, with minimum pain.

For those who have everything and all the money, please insure all you can and live for as long as you can. Change all the parts if you can afford it. For the average human beans, any day longer is suffering, pain and misery. And the suffering is not only to themselves but to their children and caregivers.

What is more merciful? To prolong the pain and suffering, the misery, or to depart when the time has come? Another high faluting idea?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

No lawsuit is the way to go

Two letters by Dr Chong Yeh Woei, President, 50th Council, Singapore Medical Association and Associate Professor Goh Lee Gan, President and Council, College of Family Physicians Singapore, were in the ST forum to defend the medical profession after Salma Khalik's article 'Tame doctor's greed and protect patients'. The medical profession must feel aggrieved by the statement that doctors are greedy and needed to be tamed. In some profession or businesses, such an allegation may bring about a series of charges and impending lawsuits to sue the party to bankruptcy.

It is most pleasing to read the counter arguments by the two doctors to defend their profession and not to go for litigation. This is a sign that our society has progressed, matured and people are wise and reasonable enough to engage in fair discussion.

Oh, I heard of the several suggestions in the recent Miss World contest that some of the contestants may be sued. I hope not and rationality and good sense will settle whatever issues that are in the heat. We don't need more litigations to settle disputes. Leave litigations to those with a lot of money to spend or to bully those who cannot pay the huge legal fees.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Subsidised or not, treat all patients equally

This is the title of an article by Lee Wei Ling on how subsidized patients were treated in Singapore’s privatized public hospitals. It appeared in the Straits Times yesterday. Some of you may be puzzled by the term ‘privatized public’ hospitals. These are hospitals that were once public hospitals but have since been privatized so that they can become more efficient by being run as private organizations. I leave the reader to figure out what efficient means. I only have a very blurred idea and I accept that everyone has a different definition of the term efficient. Whether they are making more profits as private hospitals I am not sure, I have not done any research into their financial records.



Wei Ling related a case where a husband of her friend was hospitalized with severe head injury but probably assigned to a junior doctor. Through her intervention, actually just by asking the doctor to call her in a note with her name and contact number on it, a senior doctor was assigned to the case and the attention paid to the patient was different. The patient even received a bouquet of flowers from the hospital. And the patient was a subsidized patient, which means not paying the full bill.



What Wei Ling was concerned about is that regardless of whether a patient is subsidized or not, the treatment must be the same. Quite idealistic actually. But this is good. We need people to be idealistic and a little silly than being too pragmatic and too clever. She stated clearly in the article that in the hospital under her charge, she will come down very hard on any doctor if he/she does not give the same quality of care to subsidized patients as a full paying one.



Now this is also good. At least there is one hospital that is practising some silly idealism and following the noble call of the profession, whether willingly or forced to. What is not good is that hers may be the only hospital that puts patients' interests first, rather than the monetary interests of the hospital or doctor. Okay, to be fair, the doctors must be compensated well as earning a medical degree is a very costly thing, and it cannot be for nothing. It is not a charitable profession or organization. The doctors are humans and have human needs too.



What is sad is that after Wei Ling, would the hospital still be doing what she preached and demanded? Would everyone return to their pragmatic self and think ‘private’ and laugh it off that it was all the idealism of one person? And all becomes history!



The ethos of this paradise is that everything is money and money matters most. Even people who have all the money they need for the next 10 generations are still grabbing every cent that comes their way. Even those who are one foot in the grave are also doing the same thing. Then again, why shouldn’t they when the money is all there to be taken?

This article is copied from Asian Correspondent.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Khaw Boon Wan, the Health Minister, apologised for the over crowding in Tan Tock Seng A&E service and also for not building a hospital in the northern sector earlier. This is the second big admission after LKY admitted his errors in the teaching of Mandarin in schools. While admitting errors is a very humbling and self effacing thing to do, let's hope that this is not a new trend. If it is, then more mistakes will be exposed with people more willing to admit their errors of judgement.

This reminds me of the subprime and financial crisis and all the big financial corporations cashing in by revealing horrendous losses happily and demanding billions from the American govt, which ultimately the taxpayers will have to pay. We cannot afford to have ministries lining up to admit mistakes and think that after the admission life will go on as normal. We don't pay millions for making mistakes. We pay millions for quality and zero tolerance, otherwise how to justify the huge pay and differentiate ourselves as the best govt in the world?

Over the last ten years or so our population has almost doubled, and any planner will be able to forsee the demand this will create for life services, including housing of course. Apparently this demand has slipped the minds of many planners, and hospital services too have lagged behind. Did the housing needs also came as a surprise? Maybe the sudden surge in population was unplanned, it just happened. So we are now trying our best to meet the increase in demand. And the demand is not just in medical and housing? Education, roads and transportation, recreation etc etc must cater for a population of 5 million and growing rapidly to what...6m or 8m?

Do we know where are we heading in this population growth? We need to tell the planners or they will be caught with their pants down and there will be more admissions of mistakes down the line.

The article is copied from Asian Correspondent.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

When cost over runs...

Hospital bills are going to go up and the people will not have enough savings in their Medisave to pay for it. What is the solution? Simple, make them save more,or take more of their money from their CPF. That looks like the most brilliant suggestion coming from Khaw Boon Wan. He said that a paper would be put up in Parliament and the MPs will have to decide which way to go. Currently Medisave takes 6.5% from the CPF savings. His proposal is to increase it to 9%.

'You need more contribution into Medisave. right now, 6 to 8 per cent is for acute hospitalisation. But, if collectively we decided that we wanted to also save on long term care, then we must be prepared to inject more money,' ...Said Khaw Boon Wan.

Hmmmm, who is the 'WE' who collectively decide to want to have more expensive healthway and to pay more? Did he ask the people, or the 'WE' means he and his team and the MPs who are going to vote for it in Parliament?

My comment is piss off. Don't have further designs on the people's money. Many people do not want to pay for expensive healthcare. Many people would just want to pass away as their miserable lives are not worth the hundreds of thousands that are needed to keep them alive. And why are people's money being taken away from them without their consent. Remember, it is the people's money, not your money and don't suka suka decide how much you want to take from them.

This could be the straw that breaks the camel's back in the next general election. It is the mindset, that the people's CPF contributions is there to take.

The article is copied from Asian Correspondent.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Thank you Khaw Boon Wan

The people of Singapore must stand up and say a very big thank you to Khaw Boon Wan. Boon Wan has been working tirelessly to plan for the well being of the people. He has planned for the people to have a big sum of money to pay for their expensive hospital bills. This now stands at about $30k per head in the Medisave Fund.

Now he is planning for the people to have more money to pay for good long term care services and to live peacefully, with a lot of money till 90 or 100 years old. The people better be grateful, be very grateful to Boon Wan for working so hard, planning the lives of people from cradle to the grave. And many will still have a lot of money unspent when they are in their graves, money stuck in the Medisave, unused.

I too will be very grateful if he is planning with the govt’s money and not my money. I will be very grateful if he says the govt is setting aside a big sum of money to provide healthcare and nursing home services to the people. Somehow I don’t think it is right or funny for the govt to plan for my life and dictate how much it should take from my savings for doing that. I may not be a supertalent, but I know that when people have designs on my money and take my money from me, it is wrong.

While I would like to thank Boon Wan for his kindness, compassion and passion to want to look after the people, I would want to tell him to take a break. Let the people take care of themselves for their old age. The govt has done too much already. Most of the people also have made their own plans and need not want to trouble the govt or Boon Wan too much.

Have a Kit Kat. Let the people think of how best to spend their own money. The people are not stupid. I hope the MPs have balls to say no to Boon Wan’s plan to raise the contribution of Medisave to 9%. I hope the MPs know that it is time for them to speak up for the people who voted them to Parliament and not to make decisions against the wishes of their voters.

And thank you once again Boon Wan. You are all kindness. Please give yourself a pat on the back and a break. You deserve it.

The article is copied from Asian Correspondent.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A week of silence after Boon Wan sounded the idea of raising Medisave contributions and finally I read a letter in the Today forum by a Alex Chan. Chan was concerned that the increase will hurt the young home owners as HDB has already targeted 30% of their income for its flats. These home owners have already budgeted what they could afford to pay for housing to the max. Anymore design on their CPF will mean touching on their disposable income or for those still waiting to buy a flat to revise downwards and look for a smaller unit. But surprisingly not many complain letters were sent to the ST forum. Maybe there is no problem really and Alex Chan's concern is misplaced.

So far from the govt side, only Halimah Yaacob raised some concerns that it will affect the workers if this thing is pushed through. She is the only voice against the increase. So what about the rest of the MPs? Are there still studying the proposal and getting feedback from the people? It will be good to know which MP is for or against this proposal. It will also be good to know how they vote after they have expressed their views in Parliament.

I am deeply concern about this raising of Medisave contributions and locking up more of the people's money. It seems that the govt is bend on holding on to the people's money for as much as they can lay their hands on and for as long as possible. This is the message I am getting. Is the govt so hard up of money? Obviously no. GIC and Temasek are still globe trotting around looking for good buys and absorbing whatever losses in their stride. Still, the people will have their ways of looking at these monetary measures as a way of snatching their money from them and will have many negative thoughts and feelings. And to some it is not just feelings but very painful.

I would like to suggest that Boon Wan make it more painful by raising another 5%. A big pain for once instead of creeping pains every other year. This is textbook Machiavellian strategy. Or is it to make it less painful like raising property taxes every now and then instead of all at one go?

Looks like I am going to here for a while and I will just go on posting.

The article is copied from Asian Correspondent.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Thong Chai Charity

This Charity has followed the showbiz road to raise fund to support its charity work. It has been in existence since 1867, providing free medical treatment to anyone who goes there for help. Free medical treatment! What, what, what's that? In Singapore still got free medical treatment when medical and office space costs are so high! Is someone pulling a joke? Should they be raising their fees to keep up with inflation and rising wage cost?

Indeed there are still a few of these dinosaurs that refused to keep up with time and still stupidly providing free medical treatment and medicine. They have taken the first step to the new world of commercialisation. I hope they don't go much further and start to privatise and become a profit making organisation.

For more than 140 years, Thong Chai Charity exists quietly and doing its honourable job of providing free medicine to everyone who cannot afford the great names in modern medicine. And they don't mean test anyone. Just get your treatment and medicine, no question asks.

Last night was the first time they came out to raise fund and many celebrities were moved to come forward for the cause. They included big names like Jackie Chan, Emil Chow, Mi Xue, Sky and many more from China, Taiwan, Hongkong and our local artistes. Prior to this event, the Charity survived on donations from many generous donors to keep it going. It is a worthy cause with noble and selfless doctors and staff doing their part to help the needies.

The fund raising was successful. My only concern is that they don't get carried away by the generosities of the donors and make it an annual affair to raise funds for more ambitious schemes. Just raise fund when needed and not raise fund for the sake of raising fund to build a reserve for the next 100 years.

The Charity has so far been doing a great and honorable job, and not distracted by the huge money that the medical profession can command. They have still not gotten to the idea of charging an arm or a leg to desperate people in need of help. We need such institutions to show what genuine compassion and charity mean.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

What if there is no Medisave?

We have a first class hospital system that can meet the best in the world. This is something we can be proud of. The point in question is what if there is no Medisave? Why is Medisave such an important element in our health care system that such a question needs to be asked. For without Medisave, many will not have the money to pay. Without the patients paying and supporting the system, can the system continue to operate as it is? Can the system charge the kind of fees if the patients cannot afford the fees?

Who shall be thankful for the wonderful healthcare system that we are having? My fear is that if cost is not managed, or if people think that Medisave is the ATM with unlimited supply of cash, or the cash can be increased by passing of legislation, the healthcare system will continue to be world best with world best fees and with the Medisave depleting rapidly.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A good suggestion for Khaw Boon Wan

Khaw Boon Wan is terrified by the escalating medical cost in his hospitals and is still not able to control them. And since the escalating cost is unavoidable, the next best thing is to make sure that the people can afford to pay the hospital bills, or have money to pay the bills, through the money locked up in the Medisave of course.

At the moment the minimum sum is slightly more than $30k and this could go up and up. In Boon Wan's view, this is simply not enough. He toying with the idea of pushing for legislation to transfer more funds from the people's CPF Ordinary Account to the Medisave Account to help the people so that the people can afford to pay their hospital bills. But with the HDB eyeing 30% of the people's income, the bulk coming from CPF, and other uses, touching the Ordinary Account again is going to hit the wall. The people will be angry if they cannot pay their HDB mortgages especially when HDB prices are so sure of going up and up as well.

But have no fear. A blogger here has a brilliant suggestion. Just let every member of the family of the patient be allowed to share the medical bills. If there are 4 members, then it will mean at least $120k to take. Not enough? Did I hear not enough? Did I also hear that this is already done? Wow, if this is so, then $120k is truly not enough.

In that case, this brilliant suggestion would not work and more money from the CPF Ordinary Account must go to the Medisave Account. This is the only way, the best way, to help the people pay their hospital and medical bills.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Is it so difficult?

Is it so difficult to forecast the number of doctors needed here? Hospitals are not built overnight. I think it takes much longer time to built hospitals than HDb flats. Why is there a sudden shortage of doctors when the numbers can easily be calculated with a pocket calculator?

We don't produce enough doctors from our universities, not enough capacities. And many of our brightest have to get their medical education overseas. The sad part is that these students who went overseas were not part of the planning process to meet the demands of our hospitals. They went completely on their own motivation and may not even want to return if they can find jobs elsewhere.

In the meantime we went on a recruitment blitz, grabbing anything that comes by while many of our best were scattering away from our shores.

Is this another jamban case?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Paying more in advance

So the Medisave minimum sum will be raised from $32k to $37k. The reason, Singaporeans are living longer and healthcare cost are going up. So who wants to live longer?

What this Medisave thing is about is that Singaporeans who are strong and healthy will have to pay first, to the amount of $37k. Whether they use it or not is a separate matter. Any statistics to say how many will use it?

But this is a good policy. No one will know when they will fall seriously ill and need money to pay the expensive and ever increasing medical bill. I would like to recommend that the amount in the Medisave be raised to as high as possible. Then no one will complain that they cannot afford to pay their medical bills or that hospitalisation is too expensive.

With a big saving in the Medisave, hospital bills will definitely be affordable. No need to worry about how medical cost keeps going up. Just make sure to top up the Medisave Account.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

CPF encouraging people to contribute more to Medisave

We would like to encourage low-income SEPs and informal workers to fulfill their 2009 Medisave liabilities by 31 July 2010 so as to enjoy the maximum chances of winning up to $3,000 in cash at the next MCD in September 2010.

Who would want to lock up their money into a scheme that they have no say as to how to use it? And in many cases they may not use it till the last day when they pass away?

On the other hand it sounds so good. Save the money to pay big hospital bills when they are hospitalised. And they better save more or else with the bills going to be bigger and bigger, they will not be able to pay.

I wonder how much could these people save and whether they can catch up with the rate the hospital bills are rising?

Another good thing about this, it comes with a lucky draw. The scheme is already so good and now got chance to win money some more.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Is Superbug another health crisis?

The fear of H1N1 has just subsided after hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to stock up the vaccine by fearful nations, particularly those countries that have a lot of money to pay for the drug. The pharmaceutical companies must be very thankful for the monetary windfall for a crisis that was blown out of proportion and is now seen as not worst off than another variation of the common flu.

The new hype, Superbug, is catching the attention of news hungry media. It is seen as another big thing by the European experts, and the monetary potential for big profits is very tempting. The Superbug is claimed to have its origin in India. The Indian health authority is not amused and angry that India is being picked as the culprit for the bug. And they too are questioning the vested and commercial interests of parties crying wolf.

Could this be another cry wolf episode and a money spinner? Or would the world take this less seriously as the H1N1? Would WHO raise the alarm and pronounce this as another epidemic waiting to happen?

Let’s hope that this is a false alarm. Let’s hope that countries were not made to waste precious money to hoard vaccines that may not be necessary. In this case there is no vaccine available for the next 10 years. But huge sums of money will have to be set aside for R&D to come up with a wonder drug.

What if this is real? How are we going to be affected should we be found to harbour a big pool of carriers living in our neighbourhood? One thing for sure, our economy will shrink immediately if we are to repatriate in bulk, all the foreign workers from affected countries. There is a health risk and an economic risk. Our HDB flats will be vacant with no more tenants or foreign talents vying to buy resale flats. The property bubble will surely to burst, not because of a world financial crisis, but a Superbug.

I recall the Year 2000 bug and how that also led to a crisis of worldwide proportion. This Superbug is an interesting development that could prove comical.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.