If i remember correctly, Taiwan was one of the countries that went really wrong with privatization mentioned in his report.

should check it out if you have the time.the link’s above.

It’ll be nice if we can give everyone the best, it’ll be nice if we can give everyone a billion dollars. But in the real world we can’t and there’s no point promising to (except as a way for politicians to buy votes from stupid voters and setting the country up for a huge future debt).

The “highest attainable” will continue to go up and up as progress is made.

So there is no way you can give everyone the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health when in the future there will likely be increasingly expensive treatments, drugs and prosthetics.

For example: they may eventually be able to grow a new limb for you from scratch for 20 million. But where are you going to get the money to do that for 2000 handicapped people in Malaysia? A very good mechanical prosthetic might cost 100K though – way more affordable. But it will not be the “highest attainable”.

In the past the technology was often the limit – doctors just couldn’t do anything more for you. In the future the economics would be the limit in more and more cases – they can try to do something better for you if you pay 10x more.

Responsible healthcare policies have to take those realities into account.

Development and encouragement of private healthcare options do not necessarily hamper the provision of public healthcare services. If you look at Hong Kong and Singapore, there is healthy competition between the public and private sector. Services in public healthcare facilities are pretty good. On the flip side, the pricing of private facilities is kept in check by the affordable and good quality alternative available in public facilities. Lastly, these cities also seem to have been successful in also fostering “public-private” partnerships.

The state of public and private healthcare in Malaysia I suspect is more a function of the design of infrastructure that serves as the foundation of government in Malaysia.

didn’t mean it in a condescending way. haha.

June: hahahahahahhahahha

with what we spend on political campaigns and how we’re trying to privatize everything about health care, we’re slowly becoming insensitive and uncaring towards the needs of the poor and marginalized.

i agree with you, they are a lot of inefficiencies, like how Malaysia privatized the supplies and facilities of the hospital. Price tripled after that…. Read more

it’s not really about the cancer lah. it’s how we can do so much more. and we should, the govt needs to be held accountable according to the Constitution. It’s our right that the Govt should take seriously which it isn’t. Govt’s just not being held accountable for health care services

people need to understand it’s not a prerogative, it’s a right. there are poor ppl out there rm30 also cannot afford..

Also, IJN might be privatized….again.

http://www.malaysianbar.org.my/legal/general_news/moves_to_privatise_ijn.html

That’s probably also why you hardly ever hear someone say “John had an angioplasty the other day”. They usually say things like “John had a heart attack” – because attacks by hearts are more common. They come from Cincinnati, and are vicious little buggers.

Keep writing, Michael Loo!

Because companies will be inventing more and more expensive treatments and technologies. Say someone creates an effective treatment course that costs USD200 million. Bill Gates can afford it if he needs it, but I doubt the taxpayers can afford to pay that amount for you.

BUT as long as wastage and corruption is cut down, the “limit point” can be quite high. High enough to help most common cases. The actuarists can go figure out what the max payout per person per period should be (e.g. 500K, 1 million). And perhaps people should be allowed to donate their unused quota to others (special cases – has to be regulated to avoid abuse and exploitation of the ignorant) who have used theirs up.