The graph below shows the life expentancy of the cities again. Singapore, despite having spending the lowest amount of money on health care expenditure, its life expectancy ranks up tops among all the other cities that spend more on health care. This shows that Singapore's government is smart in ensuring a banlance in the economy by saving money in the health care section and yet allowing Singaporeans to live longer due to the governments way of managing the country well.
But I know that Singaporeans are still concerned. We see medical science advancing, we see new technologies, new drugs, new procedures. People can live longer, but it costs more. And those who are in their 50s looking after aged parents, they feel the burden and they wonder “what will happen to me when my turn comes?”. They asked, “I am all right now, what about the future?” We need to gear up our healthcare systems to prepare for this ageing population and we are doing that. So today I would like to explain the implications of our ageing population and how we are preparing our healthcare system to cope. What does it mean when we say our population will be older? It means there will be more demand on health care because older people are sick more often. But this also means it is a different pattern of health care. Younger patients do not go to hospital so often. When they go to hospital it is an acute problem which can be treated within a few days and then they go home well. I remember I was admitted to hospital once as a teenager for an appendicitis operation and my doctor who was a wise old man said, “I am so happy to treat you because you are a young man, I treat you, you will go home well. When I treat my older patients, I see them, they get better, after a while they come back again and I have to treat them again. It is much more complicated.”
But now we have many more older patients who are admitted more frequently with multiple complaints. After a few days in hospital their acute condition probably has stabilised, they no longer need intensive and complex treatment but they are still not well enough to go home. You may not need to have the heart monitor, you may not need to have the blood or oxygen monitor, you may not need to have the nurse look at your every two hours or the doctor look at you twice or three times a day but you are not quite ready to go home and you still need several weeks to recuperate and to get better before you can be discharged. After they go home they may still need continuing medication for underlying long-term conditions. Maybe they have diabetes, maybe they have heart disease, they may need aspirin, they may need statins. There are so many things which you have to take not just when you are sick but for the rest of your life. And even when you are at home, you may get sick again and you may have to come back again. So we have to respond to this by putting in more resources into our hospital system, building new hospitals. We got the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital coming up in Yishun, we have got Jurong General Hospital coming up in the west, and that is good. Well, the buildings are easy to do, but getting the people to man them, the doctors, nurses, specialists, physiotherapists, that takes more doing but we are in the process of doing that. It needs money. We are in the process of increasing the budget too. We need to improve our 3M system. We are doing that too.
Democracy lasts so long as "the people don't realize they can vote themselves money from the coffers", or so I shall paraphrase. For the sake of devil's advocacy, I will portray the objectivist point of view.
For starters, health care is not a right. The rights you do have are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Every other "right" is simply an extension of these. Further, these are not rights to anything other then the ability to act. The right to the pursuit of happiness, for example, doesn't mean you have a right to a haircut, a trip to Disneyland, a new house, a video game, etc. It means you can pursue such things; you can work towards them, to obtain them. Similarly, the right to life isn't the right to live in a Las Vegas penthouse; it's the right to work to continue living.
Next, your rights end where another's begin. The only thing that the aforementioned rights guarantee is that no one will be able to rob you of your pursuit, to continue the example.
To say that health care is a right is wrong, and I daresay evil, in it's most literal definition. Health care is a good, just like any other, to be traded on the open market. If you were to say it's a right, and everyone is entitled to it, the end result is you make slaves out of the producers, in this case, doctors.
One can try to make the claim that the right to life implies health care, but this is untrue. To try and claim this as a "right" is merely to mandate charity, forcing people to give money in the form of taxes, and doctors in the form of their time, effort, schooling, intelligence (etc.). This violates the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness of doctors and taxpayers alike.
It is robbery disguised by sweet words, and nothing more. It is socialism, proven not to work by history, and immoral by reality. It is forced charity. It is meaningless.
And if allowed to fester, it will cause the decay of the medical profession as doctors go elsewhere and deny care, followed soon by the "A" students who would have been doctors becoming something that pays better, and has better hours (like a lawyer; we need more of those, right?).
As a quick closing, this is (of course) simply one perspective; who knows? All prior history of such things, all indication to the contrary, the very nature of our rights up to this point; it could all be wrong. Perhaps this perspective I'm advocating is incorrect, despite all odds. Watch the rats though; they'll leave the ship as soon as it starts sinking.
--Whew, that was more than intended. Ah well; it was fun. I hope who ever reads this can at least consider such things; group think is a terrible thing when allowed too long. As the standard disclaimer, this is merely playing the devil's advocate, not my real opinion, etc.
