Originally posted by Atobe:
How pathetic can you be - toiling over 16 days to think of a way to
respond to my post made on 6 February 2007 ? Was it so difficult
?
Unlike you, not everyone is so pathetic that they haven't got
anything else better to do than live in this forum. You are my
entertainment...I will only deal with you at my leisure. My
professional time is more valuable than you can afford 
what else remains concealed in a cloak of state legislated
secrecy, and not revealed in the carefully prepared colorful
reports ? Where are the provisions for projected losses ?
When they reveal profits in their annual reports, you choose to
ignore them and call them colourful reports. Why should anyone
believe in your allegations? Go to the press with your evidence, if
you have any.
You contradict yourself time and again, first insisting that the
government should subsidize healthcare because it made money, then
in the same breath claim that the government has lost huge sums of
money. You cannot have it both ways. Make up your mind...you cannot
even cary a consistent argument.
What is the Annual Budget allocated for Health that is still
insufficient, and result in the atrocious medical and hospital
charges that require even the lowest wage earner in Singapore to
pay for medical attention ?
If anything at all, healthcare charges in the public sector are
far too low. You obviously have no clue as to the value of highly
trained health professionals and the cost of patented drugs. You
are trying to advocate a healthcare system entirely funded by
taxes, so Singaporeans do not have to pay for medical attention?
Are Singaporeans prepared to pay higher taxes? With an aging
population, the burden of the healthcare costs will fall
increasingly on the working young. Haven't you seen the problems of
the NHS? Such a system will not work.
Was it not the original intention of the Singapore Government to
divest its own responsibility of an affordable health care system
by restructuring Public Hospitals into Quasi Government Hospitals,
and expecting these hospitals to operate along the profit-making
lines of Private Hospitals ?
If public hospitals are trying to make profit from local
patients, they have a strange way of doing it, when their charges
are so low for the majority of subsidized patients they serve. Use
your brain!
Did you not previously agree that a small percentage of the profits
made by Temasek and / or GIC would be sufficient to pay the annual
premium of a National Health Insurance Plan ?
So you admit that Temasek and GIC are making profits then? The
answer is in your question...who pays the premium during the year
when GIC and Temasek loses money? The profits during a year of
plenty like recent years when the economy is doing may well be
sufficient to cover the annual premium of a national health
insurance plan, but what happens when the economy encounters a
downturn? All Singaporeans will lose their health insurance?
In addition, what should be included in a national insurance plan?
Our medishield is a national insurance plan with a low premium. If
we want it to cover expensive healthcare items like Herceptin for
breast cancer, our premiums will have to go up. If we are going to
prescribe Herceptin to all early breast cancer patients in
Singapore and Rituximab to all suitable lymphoma patients, even the
profits of Temasek in a good year will not be enough to pay the
annual premium required.
No, the government should provide a basic level of healthcare that
is affordable under the 3M system of health funding we have. If you
want anything more, you will have to fund it yourself.
Our Medisave system ensures there is personal responsibility for
individual healthcare. You save up for your own healthcare needs.
If you don't smnoke and drink, you have a better chance of not
consuming as much healthcare as theose who do. If you earn more,
you can afford a better hospital class. If you earn less and have
less in your medisave account, you go for a more basic package.
That is fair.
To cater to the unfortunate instances when Singaporeans require
expensive hospital care, there is the medical insurance policy
Medishield. By pooling risks, this basic health insurance policy is
made very affordable. In addition to personal contribution to one's
future healthcare needs, this is a form of shared responsibility
for the healthcare needs of society. By pooling risks, the
healthier ones are paying to make healthcare costs affordable for
the less healthy ones.
Third, the government has created an endowment plan from public
funds for the very poor for whom even both Medisave and Medishield
are not sufficient for their heathcare needs. It is right that the
government should use public funds only for the poorest in this
way.
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