Singapore must not allow medical fees to be hijacked by profiteering rackets like the USA

SINGAPORE: Expanding fee benchmarks for private hospitals may bring greater price transparency and modest savings, but authorities must look beyond pricing controls to tackle the root causes of rising healthcare costs, doctors and experts said.

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung earlier this month announced plans to benchmark additional private hospital charges beyond the professional fees already covered, including surgeon, anaesthetist and inpatient attendance fees.  CNA

The cost of American healthcare has reached ridiculous and expensive level that the average Americans are no longer able to afford them, especially those without medical insurance coverage. It is as good as a failed system. Medical care is an essential service and allowing the profit making motive to run this profession and industry is ethically and medically immoral. When life is concerned, no one can put a value to it and some inscrutable practitioners in the industry have taken advantage of this weak point to demand a hand or leg for medical treatment.

Singapore has this practice of learning from the best practices of other countries. The USA and the West are not the best examples in managing the cost of healthcare. A good example to follow is China, when healthcare is widely and affordably available to every citizen. There is no need to demand a pound of flesh to treat a patient like in the West. Healthcare is an essential service to be provided by the state for the good health of its citizens. A sick population due to unaffordability to access healthcare is the root cause of a sick country and must not be allowed to happen.

The govt has a big role to play to keep cost of health care down, really affordable to the average citizens. A good example is the cost of a tooth filling. It used to be $30 or $50 per filling in a normal case. How much should a filling cost today that is reasonable? $100? or $200? My last experience was that I had to pay more than $200 out of pocket for a simple filling. And this is after minusing all the subsidies from the govt. The actual bill was something like $500! Can you imagine that? They added a lot of other sundries to inflate the bill and the actual out of pocket fee to be paid by the patient is still more than $200. Is this fair, justifiable? What is the govt going to do about this?

This is only a small example of the rising cost of medical care in Singapore. The govt is responsible to control the cost of medical care and stop all the abuses going on. There are so many ways to inflate the cost of medical care that should not be allowed, and the govt must step in and end to it.

The cost of Singapore's healthcare should not go the way of the Americans and the West. There are many super rich making their homes here. They can get the best healthcare at the best prices that would not hurt their pockets. But many Singaporeans are not super rich. Some are super poor, especially the unemployed and retirees. The subsidies for seniors, CHAS card and Pioneer/Merdeka card holders no longer benefit from them. When these subsidies were first introduced, these cardholders could get dental treatment without having to pay anything out of pocket for simple procedures. The subsidies were enough to cover the dental fees. Now after the subsidies, another couple of hundreds are needed says that something is grossly wrong with the system.

This unreasonably high cost of medical fees, especially basic dental care, must be looked at immediately. This is not a joking matter. It has been happening for far too long and looks like no one wants to do anything about it. Perhaps thinking that this is reasonable!