I AM puzzled by the Ministry of Health's (MOH) remarks that the
almost doubling on the high end of the average bill for a
subsidised C-class patient in a public hospital in the four years
since 2006 is partly due to patients asking for non-subsidised
drugs and implants ('Jump in hospital bills over past four years';
Jan 8).
How would patients know to ask for non-subsidised drugs and
implants? Aren't these in the treatment guidelines of the hospital,
which doctors are duty-bound to inform their patients?
Has the number and proportion of non-subsidised items in C-class
been increasing over the years?
The MOH statistics provided show that average surgical bills
have increased by at least 50 per cent at six out of the seven
public hospitals.
In my volunteer work doing financial counselling for the needy,
I have come across C-class bills of around $90,000, for just over a
month's stay in public hospitals. Since C-class is already the
cheapest hospitalisation option for Singaporeans, and
non-subsidised items are also generally not covered by CPF-approved
medical insurance, the trend of increasing health-care costs and
non-subsidised items may pose an increasing financial strain on
patients and their family members.
What are MOH's plans to address this problem?
Leong Sze Hian
