5/08/2013
When education and medicine become so expensive…
Your health and physical well being is your responsibility, an individual responsibility. If one gets sick by not taking care of himself, it is a personal problem, maybe a little personal tragedy.
Education, getting a good education, is a personal aspiration. Anyone who wants to move up the social ladder, a better quality of life, at least materially, one has to acquire a good education, by working hard and paying for it.
Both are personal matters. True. What if education is so expensive that many cannot afford to go for higher education, or because the returns from higher education are just not rewarding and may be a losing concern? Why would people want to pursue higher education to become taxi drivers or become jobless or become part time workers? It becomes a losing proposition, a losing investment.
And when medicine is so expensive that people just cannot afford to pay for medicine or visit the doctors? What happens if people choose to remain sick, and worst, with transmittable diseases like Sars that could spread, could cause an epidemic? And they refused to seek treatment or be admitted because of affordability! Or because they do not want to be robbed of all their savings?
When the people are not going for higher education, when the sick are not going to pay for their medicine or see the doctor? What would become of the society and the workforce? More foreign talents to be imported? Driving taxis not really need a degree or diploma. And would there be people dying everywhere, diseases spreading every where?
Our population saturation has reached a point that any breakdown in MRT could stifle social and economic activities. Our housing prices have reached a point that it is going to become a social problem. When would the cost of education and medicine become a socio economic and health problem?
When people are voluntarily dropping out of schools, though very unlikely, and when sick people are staying at home waiting to die but infectious and spreading the diseases, what happen? Force people to pay up or else? No money no talk?
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31 comments:
Both education and medicine are rips, largely regulated and interfered with BY GOVERNMENT.
Ever asked yourself: why does it take 12-20 years to "educate" a human being? After 20 years of education many come out and are jobless or have to take jobs they're "over qualified" for, oh, and don't forget the debt they must repay.
Healthcare never was cheap, cheap but at least there were small private clinics everywhere before the massive assault of the shitty PolyClinics, and the super big "public" hospitals.
I do not support "cheap" or "free" healthcare. Healthcare must be at a certain price where people take it seriously and save or buy insurance for it.
In the "developed" western cuntree with "free" public health, you'll notice a prevalence of very bad unhealthy personal habits because there is no FINANCIAL disincentive to "guide" people into taking better care of themselves. People continue to smoke, become obese, drink to excess all the time, eat bad foods, do drugs, participate in dangerous activities...etc.
Education and health should be treated more like "luxuries" than "entitlements".
I am trying to make sense of a time when there were not many doctors around, population relatively small and not affluent, and yes, free medicine and treatment in govt hospitals and charity supported hospitals and doctors and sinsehs offering their services for free.
There were no abuses. No over consumption of medical services. Doctors could drive to homes to treat patients at very reasonable fees, $10, $15, $20. No additional transport charges. And the doctors were comfortable, driving Benzes.
Why the over consumption, why so many doctors, clinics, hospitals still not enough, why charging so much with dental treatment a ripoff?
One of the things I noticed is the marketing. They are selling medical services like selling McDonald hamburges. Have more, have more, must have, add a few more bits of this and that and charge a bit more. Go for this check and that check....
Who is contributing to the high consumption of medical services and the high cost of medical services?
Education all over the world is about making money and protecting a group of elites. Why do they limit the intake of people studying certain degrees eg. medicine when they bloodily know that those degrees will lead to jobs? but no limit to those degrees that will not lead to jobs?
Similarly, healthcare is all about exploiting the sick and poor as much as possible before they died. Most rich people medical expenses are covered by their companies or insurance which is paid by their companies of which the costs is passed down to the poor person.
Someone should develop a kind of pill for people to die peacefully once taking them without the need to incur huge medical bills before they die or get exploited by healthcare sector.
This world is so full of lies.
No, no, they want to keep the patients alive, they must keep them alive, they want to save lives....
Arhhhhhhhhahahhahahhahhahah....
Actually medical cost cannot be too much. Remember we have free dental care for all students until JC, when we are poor?
When we are rich we got to pay to go dentist.
The problem of health care is rentier cartel. By destroying public service, we are force to purchase service from private.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Geez..
I don't know where you get your data, but I can tell you that many of us are doing quite well, thank you very much.
Veritas, you have an interesting post in your blog that Chinese is the anchor of tolerance in Singapore's multi racial society. I have added this to add to your views.
The Chinese originally are pai shen拜神 people. They believe that everything has a god and pray to everything. Not the same as everything comes from the word. By this, the Chinese accepts every religion or god, black, white, yellow, green, brown or any colours of god. The more the merrier.
This is the root of Chinese tolerance and acceptance to all religions. You can build a mosque or church or temple beside a Chinese temple, no problem. Often not the other way.
Wow, wow, wow, the crazy boy is back.
Nothing wrong for Raymond to come here to inform us that he and some of his clans are doing well.
Sinkies do know that Pappies should do better and yet they are humble not to trumpet their success here.
Raymond just want some claps and applauses for the craps he tells us here lah.
Most of us here are screwed by papaya policies one way or the other. Raymond merely just waiting for his turn. The problem with the people like Raymond is until something happened to them, they will not learn or not willing to learn from others. They still think they are untouchables.
My advice to him is to walk more often around in hospitals especially the children cancer ward. How many familes of those kids are suffering because of greedy policies by G? This is only a small part of the self center policies of papaya.
'Chinese is the anchor of tolerance'
- is chinese tolerance or no guts or the kiasi, kiasu mentality? actually too tolerance itself is a weakness. we should learn from the french that oppression of the people is a criminal offence punishable by death.
Veritas, you have an interesting post in your blog that Chinese is the anchor of tolerance in Singapore's multi racial society. I have added this to add to your views.
The Chinese originally are pai shen拜神 people. They believe that everything has a god and pray to everything. Not the same as everything comes from the word. By this, the Chinese accepts every religion or god, black, white, yellow, green, brown or any colours of god. The more the merrier.
This is the root of Chinese tolerance and acceptance to all religions. You can build a mosque or church or temple beside a Chinese temple, no problem. Often not the other way.
Hi RB, thanks for compliment. I will blog more and expose more about Hindic, Islam, Western and Sinitic civilization.
We need to know the truth.
Today, few people are aware of nuance differences.
By the way this is my blog.
Halo RB,
I would like to add another perspective on the aspect of education in Singapore.
If one can recall, during GE 2011, there were some "hot button" issues such as high salary, housing prices, over-crowded public transport etc.
But there was this NTU undergrad who even saw the need to put his own name up for the hustings.
I think let's not forget that besides education getting more expensive and counting less towards one's career, the "problem" of "giving" excessive number of precious places in our tertiary institutions to foreign students has yet to be fully addressed since 2011.
The Chinese has a saying, “肥水不流外人田”。
Over the years, many friends, relatives and acquaintances uprooted their whole family for some "greener" pastures. Just last week, an old friend from school days move on to another foreign land with entire family including 3 teenage children.
Few months ago, a relative also did the same.
RB, what is the point of giving out "freely" scholarships, precious university places and generous allowances to foreign students when our society does not make enough effort to retain our own home grown children and talents.
Having constantly been in touch with people of all walks of life including many foreigners in our midst, somehow I cannot detect any strength or special capability in many foreigners that our very own citizens and students do not possess.
Beside ministerial pay, housing issues etc, if our gahmen is not to be seen on the "foreigners' side", then they should immediately address this "problem" of "sacrificing excessive" number of precious university places that are rightfully meant for the sons and daughters in our midst.
Often, many local students who are not admitted here managed to get into relatively good universities in Australia, UK, US, Canada etc.
I can never fathom why such treatments must be meted out to the sons and daughters in our midst.
Furthermore, is there any statistics to show for the past 10 or 20 years that some of these foreign students did not "game" the system here and "make use" of Singapore as a "spring board" to jump ship to other Western countries eventually?
Cheers :)
Happy "blogging"
sgpropertymatters.blogspot.com
redbean:
>> They are selling medical services like selling McDonald hamburges.
Especially vulnerable to this "marketing" are old fucks like redbean and myself -- to be scared out of our wits about horrible things that may occur to us, and so we -- in states of FEAR hand over the cash, thus subsidizing the lavish lifestyles of those in the medical field.
My particular bugbears are full body scans (around $600 upwards at Raffles Medical) and the heavy marketing of dietary supplements.
Fact: Full CAT/ CT scans are dangerous. There is no proven effectiveness in their use
Fact: Unless you have a diagnosed deficiency -- dietary supplements are A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY, and can be dangerous if you "mega dose".
Yet places like Guardian Pharmacy will sell you all sorts of rubbish which doesn't work, and every private hospital has "pacakges" available for full body scans for people with more money than good sense.
Next time you go to the pharmacy or to a private hospital, take notice of the gullible aunties and uncles parting with their hard-earned and hard-saved cash, willfully and gladly handing over to smiling doctors and pharmacists, oh so happy to take their money and offer a modicum of insincere "hope".
Scared of dying? You're not alone. ;-)
U.S.A. Navy Ship Can’t Meet Mission, Internal U.S. Report Finds
============
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-07/navy-ship-can-t-meet-mission-internal-u-s-report-finds.html
I hope we are not buying this for our Singapore Navy!
“you do have to have some minimum kind of government. But to the extent possible, governments should try to stop interfering with what people want to do.”
Sir John Templeton
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alejandrochafuen/2013/05/07/how-to-invest-think-and-live-like-sir-john-templeton/
Can you PAPigs understand this?
Get the fuck out of our lives!
Hi RB
I wonder why so many Chinese like to attack our own tribe. Perhaps this is the price we have to pay for being too tolerant.
See how those comments when people repost my blogs.
http://therealsingapore.com/content/indian-girl-spreading-racial-hatred-singaporean-chinese-cruxified
I have studied history of Malaya. Its not Chinese who discriminate Indians. Its the Malay that did it -- in Malaysia.
The word keling degenerated because malay invented idioms like "cakap macam keling", meaning liars and many others....etc
I go to Malaysia and ALL indians I met there hate Malay. The feelings spill into Singapore.
Also FT Indians are high caste cognitive elites.
Everyone REMEMBERS pakistan kill 3 millions punjabi during partition. All hates muslim.
You look at our minority and their hatred spill against my blog, i really feel many of these commentors are stupid.
Without Chinese, Indians and Malay could kill one another, under one tribe become dominant.
I realise many here don really study history deeply.
Not to mention Shia and Suni will shit on one another here without Chinese if one side gain more strength.
We are so call medical hub, and yet most Singaporean can only feel its high cost.
Since our graduates are treat like dirt, stop talk about world ranking and increase charges.
We do need some number of foreigners into our university, but they should not given free scholarship without from first year.
How to justify without being tested.
Has anybody asked the PAPigs?
Increase population to 6.9 million.
Are they going to also increase the number of doctors produced by our Singapore universities to service the higher population?
Is it really so easy to increase the number of doctors we produce every year?
Or is the plan to import more foreign doctors from 3rd world countries to serve at our polyclinics and public hospitals?
Matilah, sorry, I am not kiasi. Only asses like you go for expensive scans and medical check ups several times a year to empty your pocket.
I have never done a medical checkup for at least 20 years. I have been self medicating all these years and Guardian happens to be one of the joints that I test out on what I need, with some reading when I am in doubt.
My medical expense is near 0, only on paraceptamol, tiger balm, watermelon frost and lately, something you rejected as rubbish, glucosamine for my knees. They are twisting like nobody's business.
At my age, I welcome death. And if I am struck down by some natural death ending sickness, let it be. Save the money for myself and my children.
Now, you cannot understand this philosophy. The older one gets, the more torturous is the body to live by. It is not living life or enjoying life. It is suffering.
High Medical Costs ? Scared to get sick ? Rather Die than be Saved ?
Fret no more !!
Buy Hospitalisation Medical Insurance from me and you can live life a King. From as little as $2 a day to $5+ a day, insurance policy will pay your medical fees and let you stay in medical suites, same as Minister stay ones, song song, no worry.
Stop fretting, move your lazy butt and ACT now before it is TOO LATE !!!
Ah Huat Ah
$2 to $5, then got $8 by pass right?
Expensive meh? Then why are so many Third World Patients?
redbean, if you read carefully what I said I was alluding to people like us.
I'm like you -- virtually zero $$ on medical, and being a hard core atheist/ anti-theist have no issues whatsoever about death.
Thus I really don't give a shit how expensive medical costs...but I'm a little confused why you bother writing about it since you too don't spend anything?
Could it be that you are a kay-poh asshole?
I am kaypoh can or not? Hopefully people are not conned by modern day bandits and lose all their savings, because kiasi.
Looks like we are the two exceptions in your people like us comment.
Anon 9.12am
You want $8 by-pass also can, but you need to buy Rider on top of your policy which typically adds 30-40% more to your costs, so put it simply, so instead of $2 to $5 a day, maybe it will be $2.8 to $7, depending you want C or A class lah. So who says cannot be done ??
Who wants ?
So quit complaining, and start doing something for yourself NOW !!
For RB supporters, I offer limited edition umbrella when you buy policy from me.
Ah Huat Ah
redbean:
>> Hopefully people are not conned by modern day bandits and lose all their savings, because kiasi.
"Modern day bandits?" Please lah uncle. People are still being conned by tricksters selling "magic stones". Today. 2013.
Their forced savings gone long time orledi -- CPF -- Citizens Ponzi Fraud
Still got hope? Wah, you very positive. Can be local "Tony Robbins" charge $2k for 3 day "seminar".
Hi Ah Huat, still can choose C class wards with mean testing?
Matilah, many people will be conned, many conned happily, many conned without knowing.
Still need to shout and maybe one or two does not trip.
Hi RB
Ah Huat not very sure latest requirement but I know C class reserved for our poorer comrades like me, so if they impose means testing I not scared, I will let them means test me. Surely I don't want richer friends to come and compete with me on hospital beds so I think they should means test lah, right ?
And whether u poor, middle or rich you can choose the insurance that suit you one. If you poor but want to live song song in hospital bed like the $8 man,you can also, anybody can, as long as you buy the correct policy but of course more expensive lah.
Ah Huat Ah
This is cool!
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