april 1 comes early

sunday morning is a time for a little senseless digression. it is good to read of laughters and applauses in the sunday times, during speeches by koh boon wan and ng eng hen. both must have been telling a lot of jokes to draw the laughters from their audiences. it is good that ministers have a good sense of humour. a rare quality in this highly stressed singapore when children playing with white elephants are taken very seriously by adults. now for a little good news. boonwan announced that from april 1, withdrawal of medisave is up from $300 to $400. this is one of the reasons for the loud applause reported by the serious sunday times. i think the applause will be thunderous if the announcement is for medical fees to by slashed by another 10%. but good news is good news. no need to bother about substance. another piece of good news. an average c class hospital bill is $800. and 9 in 10 patients in b2 class paid less than $2,200. and the medisave account as at end 2004 showed a balance of at least $17,000. more than enough to pay for hospital bills. so no need to worry. given that not many people will be hospitalised more than 3 times in their life time, and using the $2,200 figure as a guide, would a $6,600 medisave balance be more than adequate? take in the continuous increases in medical fees, a $10,000 medisave balance will surely be sufficient. ahem, i think the roar of approval will bring down the roof of the hall if boonwan would to announce that from april 1 medisave will be capped at $10,000 instead of the current $32,500 and will go up further. and eng hen drew laugher in his rebuttal of wp's 4 dangerous time bombs in its manifesto. maybe the wp should take his advice and do a thorough audit on the team that put up these dangerous proposals. are the proposals seriously thought out to win votes for the wp or to undermine wp? if i can agree with 3 out of eng hen's four rebuttals, then i think it is serious. the four points may be announced too early. april 1 is still quite some time away. the point that i agree with wp is subsidies and assistances to those who need help. after spending $2.5 bil on upgradings of parks and facilities, and $1 bil for needy folks, i thought it will be better to spend $2.5 bil on people and $1 bil on parks and plants and upgrading. then no reason to say money not enough. with 240,000 on the official list of being poor, money sure not enough. $1 bil really can't do much. it is better to give, maybe $100,000 to one person and he will be so much happier. and cheaper to do so. and one can claim authority from the divine who said, 'for those who have, more will be given to them.' with divine authority, who dare to say it is wrong? so if you are earning a lot more, maybe $2 mil, you need not have to complain that you need a raise. you need not have to tell people that you need more cash to stash away in your bank accounts. more will be given to you without asking. isn't that nice? it is a beautiful sunday.