Contributed by a reader.

 Mr Khaw Boon Wan, please do become a big time liar like the father and son.

Subsidies for mammogram?

Do you dare to take up this challenge? I bet my life and you bet your life on this computation.

Just get an auditor to do a computation on how much profit or loss, this mammogram exercise is bringing in to the coffer of the Health ministry.

1) How much does a mammogram equipment cost? Depreciate it over 5 years or ten years depending on it reliability.

2) Add on the cost of labor. Send in an industrial Engineer to help them to be as productive as possible.

3) Compute the about to get the cost of production per the 5 minute it takes to conduct a mammogram.

4) At S$50 per scan, do you still think it is subsided?

Please do not hang out sweetie words like health-care subsidy anymore. There is no such thing as health-care subsidy when everyone in Singapore knows that the medical cost has been rising spirally over the past two decades. Your ministry has been making big fat profit from the provision of health-care service. If not, how do you account for the 3% of government expenditure on health-care versus the world average of 6%?

Jan 24, 2010:

HEALTH Minister Khaw Boon Wan said on Sunday that he was ’sympathetic’ towards the need for women to have mammograms, but said he was concerned about people depleting their Medisave accounts too quickly.

Speaking after house visits where he helped distribute food hampers to 260 households in a rental block in Marsiling, he said: ‘Don’t forget, Medisave was for hospitalisation. It is for sick people – in fact, very sick people, who have bills of around $2,000.’

He was responding to an appeal from Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Lim Hwee Hua to let women use Medi-save to pay for breast cancer screenings.

Mrs Lim said on Saturday that helping women aged 50 to 69 form a habit of screening for breast cancer every two years is a current priority of the community arm of women PAP MPs, known as Women Inspiring, Nurturing, Grooming Singaporeans (Wings).

Mr Khaw said that his rule of thumb was that anything less than $100 should be paid out of one’s cash savings. He added that current subsidies for mammograms bring their cost as low as $50 for women over 40, and $25 for those who have not gone for checks in the past three years.

His worry: That people in their 50s may use their Medisave money on smaller expenses, not anticipating what could befall them in the future.

Mr Khaw joins other ministers and MPs like Foreign Minister George Yeo and Senior Parliamentary Secretary Teo Ser Luck who have started blogging to engage the public in a more personal way. He said he wants to use such online platforms to share the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) plans, get feedback and suggestions and ‘forge consensus’. He added: ‘I hope to anchor in this platform a large constituency of Singaporeans who are interested in health matters, whom we can directly engage through this medium.’

Source: ST

Mr Khaw said he hoped to be open with the workings of the ministry through the blog, which was set up earlier this month and is not a personal one. ‘Every health policy should be based on sound arguments and we do not monopolise wisdom,’ he wrote. ‘If our policy is flawed and can be enhanced, we welcome comments and will adopt practical suggestions.’

If it’s not a personal blog, I suppose Mr Khaw will not be giving his personal take on policies and responding to public comments. Something which he may have learnt from Mr Yeo’s experience with Mr Chee Soon Juan perhaps? So what is the value of this MOH blog? Mr Khaw wants to share the MOH’s plans, get feedback and suggestions and ‘forge consensus’. Can’t this be done via MOH’s website? Perhaps the Minister doesn’t really understand the concept of blogging.

This lame effort by MOH to connect with the online citizenry is evidence of the PAP’s continuing failure to understand new media. This is their achilles’ heel, one which opposition parties should take full advantage of during the next general elections.

SINGAPORE: Despite facing challenges in taking care of mental patients, more than 90 per cent of nurses at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) said that they will go beyond the call of duty to support the hospital.  This was found by a survey done for the National Healthcare Group.   Eighty-five per cent of the nurses surveyed also said they are proud to tell others that they work at the hospital, and 91 per cent said they are personally motivated to help the hospital succeed.

Source: CNA

Some of these nurses were recognised for their dedication and excellent nursing services Friday morning. More than 160 outstanding nurses received awards from Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan. 

Civic Advocator applauds the dedication of these health workers.  It is indeed rare these days to find Singaporeans (at all levels) who are personally motivated to help others.  Apart from these awards, I hope our Health Minister is also ensuring that these nurses’ financial and mental health are well taken care off.

A VETERAN warrant officer from the Singapore Armed Forces collapsed and died yesterday morning after completing a 3km run at the annual SAF Commanders’ Sports Day. Master Warrant Officer Palani Jegathesan, 45, of the Republic of Singapore Air Force, was taken immediately to the Safti Military Institute Medical Centre, less than five minutes away from where he fell at the Safti Military Institute Sports Complex. When doctors there failed to revive him, he was rushed to the National University Hospital, but died about an hour later.

Source:  The Straits Times

Our hearts go out to the family of Mr Palani.  Such sudden deaths seem to be getting quite common in the SAF.  Just last month, another warrant officer – 52-year-old Second Warrant Officer Lim Kian Hong – also died during a training run. Before that, I believe there could be at least 2 or 3 more over the last couple of years?  And after each incident, Mindef conducts an inquiry which apparently hasn’t produced any effective measures to protect our servicemen. 

Whilst it would be unrealistic to expect Mindef to stop all physical activities pending the results of the inquiry, we hope this time it would initiate a more comprehensive and rigorous inquiry that involves the relevant national health authorities and medical experts.  The problem is evidently larger than the SAF, one that could even be a national health issue.

Three recent issues cause me great discomfort. The first is the topic of euthanasia, the second is the sale of organs and the third is the suggestion of sending our elderly to a neighbouring country to save costs.

The health of a person, particularly the health of the poor, elderly and the dying is not simply a market problem that can be solved by the free market. If our standard of value for everything is money, then everything will become a commodity to be bought and sold. This means that the rich will have access to higher-valued products and the very poor will not. Inevitably every person himself will have a price tag and also a social pigeon-hole that fits the price-tag. Every person will become a commodity, not a man but an economic abstraction. His relationship with other men is governed by the price tag that he wears.

Source: Sgpolitics.net

We would like to see more heart, rather than just money, behind our government policies.

http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2009/02/putting-our-old-folks-in-johor.html

Excerpts:

So this is life in Singapore, you spend your entire life working for money and when you’re old the govt encourages your children to put you in a nursing home in Johor to save money.

http://wayangparty.com/2009/01/12/did-khaw-close-one-eye-to-one-eyed-dragons-gift-to-tang-wee-sung/

Posted by wayangparty on January 12, 2009

By Eugene Yeo, Senior writer

When triad leader “One-eyed dragon” Tan Chor Jin was hung last Friday, his organs were donated to others, including Mr Tang Wee Sung who got one of his kidneys.

Mr Tang was arrested and convicted on charges of attempting to buy a kidney for an Indonesian.

Though Mr Tan and Mr Tang do not know each other, Mr Tan has indicated his wish to donate his kidney to Mr Tang. This has set the internet chatrooms buzzing with unsubstantiated claims that there is some “undertable” deal done between the two.

According to a Renal Registrar I spoke to, renal transplantation is the only definitive treatment option for patients with end-stage renal failure who are dependent on hemodialysis to replicate the normal kidney function of removing toxic wastes from the body.

A donor kidney can either come from a living donor or kidney that is obtained from a suitable donor who has died suddenly but had otherwise been in a good state of health. Such a transplant is called a cadaveric renal transplant.

Due to the scarcity of cadveric kidneys, there are strict clinical guidelines governing the selection of recipients to ensure they will benefit most from the renal transplants.

Below are some of the guidelines:
1. Below the age of 60.
2. Must not be suffering from any terminal or incurable disease like cancer, AIDS, ischaemic heart disease (triple vessel disease), chronic liver disease, chronic lung disease etc.
3. Free from blood-borne diseases like hepatitis B and C.
4. Social and economic background to ensure that patients who receive the transplant are able to continue follow-up and afford the expensive post-transplant immunosuppressive therapy.

Strictly speaking, Mr Tang did not qualify to be a recipient as he has undergone a bypass surgery for triple vessel disease. (meaning the three coronary arteries supplying oxygen to his heart are blocked which puts him at high risk of death from a heart attack). In fact, the Straits Times reported that he was struck off the waiting list for a cadveric transplant.

Under normal circumstances, when a cadaveric kidney is available, the patient with the best blood and tissue match will get it. However Mr Tang was able to bypass this as Mr Tan has expressed his wish explicitly for his kidney to be donated to Mr Tang before he was hung.

Mr Tan’s elder brother Tan Chor Juay told The Sunday Times that Mr Tan had requested that his kidneys, liver and cornea be donated only a few days prior to his execution. Mr Tang was “called up” by NUH to have the renal transplantation done on the eve of Tan’s execution which seems to imply that a suitable donor has already been found.

A renal transplantation is a major surgery. Both the donor and the recipient have to go through an extensive pre-operative examination to ensure that the donated organ will not be rejected by the recipient’s immune system. This includes frequent blood and radiological investigations.

This means that Tan’s decision to donate his kidney to Mr Tang may not be as haphazard as what the press reported and instead may be a well considered, pre-mediated decision.

If Tan really wish to donate his organs to “help others”, he doesn’t have to specify any specific donor and why to Mr Tang who is no relation or friend of his ?

Did Mr Tang get in touch with Tan before his execution ? What is the real reason behind Tan donating his kidney to Mr Tang ? If Mr Khaw Boon Wan really wish to get into the bottom of things, he can easily find out the truth. However, he declined to do so on the grounds of “patient privacy”.

Under the current laws, it is still illegal for Singaporeans to purchase a kidney from a living donor. I am not sure if this applies to prisoners on the death row. Is it against the law for one to offer financial incentives to an inmate to donate his organ after he is sent to the gallows ?

Mr Khaw Boon Wan has been surprisingly dodgy on the issue. He seemed genuinely happy for both Mr Tang who was able to get a successful transplant and Tan for his ‘commendable’ act of donating his organs to save the lives of others while ignoring the possibility of a legal transgression here.

It does appear that certain rules can be bent and eyes can be closed for those who are wealthy and well connected in Singapore.

http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-new-year-and-1st-pap-gift-arrives.html

Happy New Year and the 1st PAP gift arrives!

Happy New Year.

We all heard the reassuring words of our PM who said yesterday there will be help for those in need in 2009. Coming from someone who said that the GST hike was meant to help the poor we all know what to expect in times of trouble. In fact the 1st gift from the PAP has arrived today. It is a gift for the most needy Singaporeans – those who are sick. Today means testing will be implemented at all govt hospitals.

I have pointed out that it is interesting how the govt can means test you without taking into consideration what your final medical bill is. If you examine the means testing criteria it is based on income OR housing. So if you lost your income due to retrenchments, they can disqualify you from affordable care because of where you stay. Just to get an idea what medical bills are like these days, you just have to look at the case of the pregnant maid who had a pre-matured baby who was treated in one of our govt hospitals – the total bill was $67,000 for a 27 day stay at hospital. Well, you might think that for Singaporeans the medical insurance takes care of that….that is a misconception. Our system does not take care of newborns with congenital health problems or are simply born pre-mature. A baby born 2-3 months pre-mature can result in a bill of $100K-250K and this is not covered by insurance. But this is one of the cracks in our system – insurance with its payment limits, types of treatment etc will mean more people falling through the cracks. Also, many people will be uninsured because they are too old, have pre-existing conditions, have no income etc. Just look at what happened to the US system which was based on insurance.

What has been driving up medical costs? Last year hundreds of thousands of foreigners came to Singapore for medical treatment because Singapore has been marketed as a medical hub to the rich in the Middle East and around the region. That strained our capacity and drove the cost of medical care up. The PAP’s solution of this problem is to make Singaporeans pay more when they are sick.

So this is the 1st gift from the PAP govt in 2009 and it is to those who will get sick in 2009. How’s that for a great compassionate start to 2009….

We help ourselves. Don’t expect others to help

Tom Wright painted a bleak picture of Singapore’s property sector going forward at The Wall Street Journal. His article ended with the following:
“I’m yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel [for Singapore],” says Mr. Tan, the high-end broker.
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Our skin isn’t as thick as it should be

The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) organised a seminar on March 4 to discuss Singapore’s political blogosphere.  Tan Tarn How, Senior Research Fellow and Research Assistant Tan Simin presented their paper on trends observed in the blogosphere.  As reported in the TOC, the researchers identified the following limitations:

The online-offline firewall, while somewhat alleviated by offline [...]



Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew – The answer to the African problem?

Recently, I followed a thread “Democracy and Economic Growth” which started in PoliticsForum.org.   Apparently, members there often question the role of democracy in a developing nation. “During the wave of democratization in Africa during the 90s, many people had renewed hope for the continent, immediately equating newly established democracies to economic growth. Are these democracies [...]



Tell Singapore government: Ask them a question or give a suggestion

We informed people about the “Tell Singapore Government” subsite and have received some interesting reaction at some forums.
See: 3in1 Kopitiam, Sam’s Alfresco Coffee, Singapore Kopitiam, SgForums
Our responses to some of the comments are listed below. If we are not answering some other specific questions, that is because we do not know how.
 

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