Letter by JT

It appears that yet again, CAP’s SM Idris has decided to go on a frolic of his own. This time by stating that Private Wings in Government Hospitals are the wrong things to do. Sometimes one really have to suspect if this guy truly knows what he is talking about or goes about criticizing everything and anything sundry just to occupy his time. There are only three components to a hospital bill: 1) Doctor’s fees 2) Hospital charges (Bed, Nursing, Utilities, Investigations, etc) and 3) Consumables (Medicines, gloves, catheters, stents, etc).

This government has been benevolent enough in providing and perhaps in the case of Sabah trying to provide, items 2 and 3 but cannot match up to 1. Idris wants equitable healthcare for everyone. When he says equitable what does he mean? If he means placing a few GTN tablets under the tongue for a heart attack, or placing a plaster of Paris cast for a broken tibia, or delivering the 3rd child in a mother with no co-morbidities, or putting up a drip for a dehydrated patient or placing a few stitches on a wound caused by the neighbor’s dog, that’s fine. This government would have no problems accommodating them.

But if he is talking about plating/nailing every fracture of a victim of a high speed polytraumatized patient, reconstructing all the facial bones in an accident victim, or doing a bypass for a coronary patient with recurrent pain or ballooning and placing an emergency stent in a patient with a heart attack or doing a liver transplant in a patient with liver cirrhosis, then Idris must surely know that even all of Malaysia’s Read the rest of this entry »