Basic Healthcare Scheme – The straw that breaks the camel’s back

Some Singaporeans woke up yesterday morning and thought they had a pleasant surprise when they read the main media headlines. Medisave Minimum Sum Scheme scrapped. For the self employed oldies, no longer need to top up until they reach 100 years or older.  The good news was proven not to be. It was like the devil and the deep blue sea. In place of the Medisave Minimum Sum, with a current ceiling of $43,500, a new scheme has been introduced, called the Basic Health Scheme with a limit of $49,800. Your money in the Medisave Minimum Sum account would be transferred there. And those below 65 could expect this sum to go up and up over the years. Whatever in your Medisave Minimum Sum would not be safe. You can kiss them goodbye.

This BHS is supposed to be better designed to cater for the oldies’ medical care in old age. It also means that the oldies would not be spared from paying to the Medishield Life Scheme even when they are jobless, without any income and dying. Oh, no worry, the BHS would pay.

When a Govt thinks it is alright to make the oldies pay with their coffin money, their life savings, when they are old and jobless and have no income, the Govt lost its moral right to govern. When they would not spare the oldies and think it is alright to take their last few dollars in the name of looking after them, it shows a callous and ruthless mindset completely devoid of compassion and human decency.

There is no point talking about this anymore. Opposition parties better quickly get their acts together, offer an alternative that does not rob the oldies of their life savings. Fleecing on the old and helpless and jobless is ethically unacceptable for whatever farcical excuses. The opposition parties must come out with a plan to provide free coverage for the oldies, not necessary the whole works to keep them alive, hooked to a machine, or expensive surgery and drugs that would cost a bomb. Just provide basic medical care in Class C wards free for the oldies to pass away in dignity, with minimal pain, and with no fear of money not enough and hoping for charity. Many are wishing a quick death when they have nothing to keep them going. Stop the crap that the oldies want to live forever. Only those with millions in their savings would want that. Those that want to live forever would be to afford anything. No need to worry about them.

Oldies 70 and above are mostly in full retirement, some already retired by their mid 50s when they became unemployable due to the FT scheme. Many would hardly have anything left to live by. Many would be dependent on their little savings or children to take care of them. Spare them from the burden of paying medical insurance premium and to live in peace, to be respected and honoured as senior citizens, not to be troubled by having to find money to pay medical insurance.

This is the minimum expected from a caring and people centric govt. This is expected of political leaders that rule with a heart, not those with bad hearts, not mechanical hearts that cannot feel. Vote for any party that would look after the old and helpless, not parties that would want to rob them of their coffin money when they are old and feeble and money no enough.

This is the last straw. It reveals the kind of outrageous values and thinking in sick heads. When they say they got good hearts, don’t believe them. Very likely mechanical hearts or transplants from animals or clones.