Merging healthcare sectors a wrong move

Star: THE current sectors of healthcare, i.e. government and private, should be maintained and improved on as well as refined into a model of high standard of care for the citizens of this country, and even marketed for others in the region.
Over the last few decades, both sectors have been developing and flourishing at an amazing pace, so much so that Malaysia can be a model of good healthcare to the developing – and even developed – nations.
The private healthcare sector has grown in an exemplary way, with a few giant healthcare providers taking a major share of the industry. Development and progress continue together with the health industry, boosted by the participation of individual and corporate payors.
Many of the major private healthcare centres can proudly boast of facilities and services equal to that of Western nations. The private healthcare service is currently serving a significant number of both the local and expatriate population, all for a fairly reasonable annual premium.
Today, it is not only the rich who purchase such policies, but also the average income earner, and even some government servants who want to enjoy good healthcare, especially during an emergency.
In the government sector, we have seen an equally impressive growth of healthcare facilities – rural healthcare centres, district hospitals and major city and town hospitals (previously known as general hospitals), sprouting across the length and breadth of the country, providing one of the best government supported healthcare services in the world.
Why change the equilibrium? Why introduce an unknown, untested and possibly unworkable system of healthcare for everyone?
The private sector is already in an excellent state, with various centres fulfilling Quality Care ISO 9000 and JCI standards. The subscribers are happy, and the providers are happy, and healthcare financiers, too, are flourishing.
It must therefore be the government sector that needs to be revamped, improved and revitalised, rather than merging the two into one.
Taking a smaller excellent private healthcare service and merging it with a massive government organisation is certainly not the way to produce excellence.
I believe that the Cabinet with its wisdom and its primary role of serving and protecting the public will not proceed with 1Care 1Malaysia, but maintain a good two-provider system, while pushing the Health Ministry to do better and be as good as the private healthcare sector, which is also mainly owned by the government and its affiliated bodies.
I vote “No!” to 1Care 1Malaysia, but being a pensioner, I say “Yes!” to better government healthcare services!

Dr K.H. SNG,
Kuala Lumpur.