when health is indeed weatlh

‘health is wealth’. i’m sure many of you have heard of (and agree) of this popular saying. yes indeed, health is wealth as it is something precious to us. usually when you ask people what they wish for, good health would be one of them. yes we all want to be healthy.

well, this saying ‘health is wealth’ is going to take on a new meaning… a literal meaning… if healthcare in our country is privatised or if the proposed national health insurance scheme takes off.

on last tuesday (7 june) i attended a forum entittled ‘health and healthcare for all malaysians’ organised by penang office of human development (POHD) held at my office building.

the forum was moderated by anil netto from aliran and the 2 speakers were datuk dr t. deveraj and mr subramaniam pillay, an economist.

datuk deveraj started off by giving us a brief history of healthcare services in malaysia, then he gave a comparision on public and private healthcare.

subramaniam pillay, who is also a member of the steering committee of the coalition against healthcare privatisation which is made up of 81 civil society groups, gave us a run-down of the ecnomics of healthcare and brief us on the healthcare system of some countries, like USA, UK, canada and singapore.

(note: in the latest issue of aliran, the front cover story ‘can you afford to be sick’ is by subramaniam pillay. go and get a copy… it’s interesting read.)

the argument against privatised healthcare is of course that it will cost more and this will put a burden on the poor. as subramaniam said, the growth of the private hospital industry catering to the wealthy in society sucked away expertise from the public sector. this means the private sector will have better healthcare facilities. and this also means the rich can afford to have better healthcare while the poor, who have to be contend with public healthcare, where seeing that expertise had been drawn away, naturally the healthcare won’t be as good as private healthcare.

this ‘two-tier system’ – public and private; public for the poor and private for the rich – doesn’t seems to go well with activists. why? because they feel morally it is not right that “because i can afford it, i will receive better healthcare” as they believe that ALL should receive the same kind of healthcare.

i don’t know. to me this had already been happening and it is kind of all right to me. er… i mean… yes, morally it is not so right that just because you are poor, you cannot received good healthcare but nowadays in this competitive dog-eat-dog world, who worry so much about morals? sad, but true.

it is a known fact if you are poor, you have to get up very early morning, go to the general hospital, take a number, wait hours for your turn, but if you are rich, no problem! just ask your driver to drive you to a private hospital and with loads of cash to give away, you will be accorded VIP treatment – no waiting and good service/treatment. that’s life.

i remember long ago when my late father was hospitalised. the doctor said there was a hole in his windpipe and they need to insert ‘something’ to sort of ‘patch’ up the hole. so they did. then one day we found out he had to had a surgery again because this ‘something’ broke and they had to re-insert a new one. we were puzzled and asked how come the ‘something’ can broke. the doctor’s reply sort of anger us. he said “because we use a cheap ‘something’. there is another type which is more expensive which we did not use as we thought you might not want it”. in other words he was trying to say “… because we thought you could not afford it.”

why didn’t the doctor asked us first? why did the doctor assumed we can’t afford the better more expensive ‘something’? oh i see… because we are not relatives of robert kuok or cronies of anandan krishnan. sheesh! if the health or life of our loved ones is at stake, we would gladly spend for him/her the best.

you see, it all do boils down to if you can afford, you will receive better healthcare treatment. this is sort of well… natural, just like if you can afford it, you will eat in a better more expensive place. as long as there are private and public healthcare, the rich will go for private, the poor has to go for public. let’s just hope the public will remain public and the government won’t be silly (or greedy?) to privatised all together healthcare.

the insurance scheme is another matter. i’m not so sure how it works but if you refer to anil netto’s article, you can read about it and find out.

now i wouldn’t like to use ‘health is wealth’ anymore. health is precious… for everyone, rich and poor.