One of the reasons for escalating health care costs in Singapore is a severe myopia on the part of singapore's million dollar policy planners (and million dollar ministers) who have not been able to address a severe shortage of doctors that has progressively accumulated over the decades.
All the tell tale signs were there form decades. Are Singaporeans paying million dollar ministerial salaries but getting peanut performance?
Peering deeper, it appears that it was the very policies of this bunch of myopic status oriented elitist misfits which attributed to the current shortage in doctors.
"For decades it was common knowledge that there was a severe shortage in supply of doctors in Singapore. This had contributed to escalating health care costs to the extent that the paternalistic government found it necessary to increase medi-save contributions in CPF accounts. One would have expected the Medical Faculty to increase student intake and also increase employment of foreign doctors to alleviate the dismal situation. But they had steadfastly refused to do either, allowing the situation to go from bad to worse. What compounded the situation was the archaic admissions criteria in the medical faculty which placed a strict quota on female graduates who would otherwise be admissible.
The rationale behind this policy can best be described as medieval, resting perhaps on the argument that female doctors will ultimately marry and abandon their medical professions in pursuit of domestic life. This archaic medieval policy was only lifted last year, after being in effect for decades."
To make matters worst, the government here practises a brand of academic elitism that is unique only to Singapore;
"Does the current system work, or is it making an already bad unemployment situation, even worse? Only in Singapore do we have a government that is so engrossed with the accumulation of paper qualifications, that they have long since forgotten the original objective behind the education system, and have instead identified the means as an end to itself. In their blind pursuit of their version of a utopian society, educational elitetism takes center stage above all else, eclipsing the actual needs of the labour market itself."
It is no surprise that Mr Philip Yeo (the man who once stated publicly "Got a Basic Degree? Wash Test-tubes") is one of the major proponents of this brand of flawed logic, which is also endorsed by singapore's million dollar ministerial cabinet.
Human Rights
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