Making healthcare more AFFORDABLE the PAP way....

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

AFFORDABLE is the most abused word in Singapore ...just became more abused by the PAP.
I just want to show you what is so wrong with the PAP...and its trapped thing. It is like they think
in circles within a box.

Please read through all the suggestions in attached article below to understand what they are trying to do...modify existing medisave restrictions so it can be used for more services - one recent suggestion is PAY MORE Medishield when you're young so that premiums are not escalated when you're old. ,,,and so on. Only govt in the world who will make things affordable by asking people to pay more. Allowing you to use your own MediiSave for more services does not make things more affordable.... How can things become MORE AFFORDABLE when the price remain the same!!?!!!!

This is the PAP...tweaking here and there without asking FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS.....

The FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION that should be asked and any govt would ask is WHY IS HEALTHCARE SO EXPENSIVE? The solution to make it affordable has to be how to increase people's income to pay for it or how to reduce the cost to make healthcare cheaper through various means.

First why is health care so expensive. This is actually a kindergarden question that the govt should answer first before all these other suggestion. Grab a specialist or surgeon and ask why needs to be paid so much? He will tell you that he expects to be paid more because private hospitals are willing to pay 3 times more than public ones because they have rich foreign patients. Our healthcare cost escalation is due to the PAP turning Singapore into medical care hub when the resources are tight even for people living in Singapore. When the PAP restrict the number people going to NUS medical school to limit doctors , then it promotes Singapore as a medical hub by giving permits to build so many private hospitals and bring in rich foreign patients, the demand for limited resources escalates ...and ordinary Singaporeans pay the price for this. Top Singapore doctors all go to private hospital to take care of rich foreign patients and the cost keep spiralling up,

The PAP refuse to admit these policy missteps and never fix them.

To make healthcare more affordable, govt now has to spend more on subsidies. This has to be done by adjusting our ideologically lopsided overspending on defense to use the money to care for our sick, poor and elderly. The PAP run GPC on healthcare is hopeless, they came out only with small tweaks and no fundamental changes in policy that will make a material difference.

You really make intelligent people sound like idiots and robots when you constrain their thinking in the PAP box. Singapore spends more that the combined of Indonesia and Malaysia to defend a territory 10000 times smaller is extremely inefficient, wasteful and unjustifiable when there are so many Singaporeans need more help due old age and illness. It shows the inefficiency and misallocation as a result of hardline thinking of the PAP.

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http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...ns/775082.html
SINGAPORE: The Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Health has submitted several recommendations to the government to make healthcare more affordable.


To ensure that out-of-pocket healthcare expenses are kept manageable, the committee suggested:

- expanding the scope of Medisave usage up to a certain cap, so that it can be used to cover more services such as health screenings, essential dental procedures, physiotherapy and occupational therapy; and


- ensuring the continuity of MediShield premium payments and its affordability, especially for the elderly.


GPC chairman Lam Pin Min said: "We have received feedback that there are occasions that patients ran out of Medisave to pay their premiums and as a result their MediShield lapsed.

"In times of crisis when they need medical treatment or hospitalisation, they are unable to tap on Medishield to pay for their medical expenses and for such cases sometimes they have to apply to the medical social worker and the hospital for Medifund assistance...

"Instead of using Medifund to pay for their entire bill, wouldn't it be cheaper if someone could come along to assist these patients to pay for the premium - which will definitely cost much less than the total cost of the treatment itself?

"With that, we hope the government can look into some form of assistance scheme to prevent the MediShield coverage of these low-income Singaporeans to lapse."

He added: "I personally feel the current 3M framework is actually a good one. However, we need to tweak it, to make it even better, such as liberalising the use of Medisave and strengthening the coverage of MediShield so that eventually the out-of-pocket expenditure by Singaporeans will be left more manageable."


Another suggestion is to lift restrictions on Medisave use in areas of community care and revise the Eldershield payout.


Dr Lam said: "Currently, we are facing a situation whereby the level of subsidy as well as Medisave usage for social and community care is much lower than that of acute hospitalisation. And this has inevitably resulted in patients choosing to stay in hospital rather than be discharged to a community hospital."


To manage rising healthcare costs, the GPC recommended that the standard drug list cover more essential drugs.


Finally, the GPC said existing medical assistance schemes and frameworks should be reviewed and rationalised.


The Community Health Assist Scheme, for example, now covers low-income households and persons above 40.


But the GPC wants the scheme extended to Singaporeans of all ages and all chronic diseases.


The committee also suggested re-defining the role of general practitioners, to review them as a public resource rather than private ones. This can be done by considering GP referrals for subsidised care immediately, instead of having to refer patients to the polyclinics first.


The GPC also recommended that the application process for assistance schemes be reviewed and simplified.


The recommendations are the result of a consultation process. Over the past one to two months, the GPC for Health had sought the views of a wide spectrum of people that included healthcare professionals, grassroots leaders and ordinary Singaporeans.


Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said the GPC's report is a thoughtful one, reflecting the concerns of many Singaporeans.

He agreed with the key thrusts such as care integration, managing healthcare costs, enhancing the healthcare financing framework and reviewing and rationalising existing medical assistance schemes.


Mr Gan said the ministry is studying the suggestions, adding that many of the current policy reviews are aligned to the recommendations.

- CNA/xq/ir


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