Khaw Boon Wan is a good minister.
He is the only Health Minister who has a complete knowledge of
how the health sector works in Singapore. He is a not a "helicopter
minister" from somewhere else. He shows genuine care for the poor,
sick, elderly and the handicap and with a rational mind.
True, he is earning millions of dollars and none of us here in
the sgf has this ability to earn as much or anywhere near to it.
So, don't be envious of him as we do not have the same
ability like him.
He has to make very difficult decisions on how the Health budegt
will be allocated to each competing medical needs. Should he
allocate more funds to help AIDS patients, there will be less fund
for Cancer patients who need the new Cancer drugs ? His decisions
will affect the lives of the patients.
He has many issues to ponder every minute and decisions to make.
So, you think he is like many of the kids in sgf who will MSN, read
emails, facebook, tweeters etc all the time ? Despite his busy work
schedule, he is writing a blog in an effort to communicate and get
in touch with the public. He does not want to make policies in an
ivory tower.
Once he finds out that patients have to queue outside the
polyclinics at 7 am to take numbers, and after a few days, he
informs the polyclincs to let the patients to wait inside the
clinic instead of outside.
Also, once he knows that patients have to wait 6 to 9 months
before they can see the specialist doctors in hospitals. He
instructed the hospitals to shorten the queuue period and he also
makes the firm decision to recruit more doctors and enlarge the
enrolment for NUS medical faculty, the setting of new medical
schools with the long-term view to shorten the queue period.
He has also implemented many other policies that benefit the
patients.
Nevertheless, he still has the difficulties from preventing the
health cost from rising.
Just hope that he can finds ways to slow down the rise in health
cost.
