Post-Budget forum homes in on healthcare costs
Singapore
THE escalating cost of healthcare was one of the key concerns raised at a post-Budget 2019 forum on Thursday, with members of the panel and on the floor asking how this cost could be tamed.
Panelist Chew Soon Beng, a labour economics professor at the Nanyang Technological University, kicked off the discussion when he touched on the Medisave top-ups provided for the Merdeka Generation in the latest government Budget, which he said was obviously given to ease the burden of healthcare costs.
Why are they so high, he asked at the forum hosted by the Economics Society of Singapore and chaired by Vikram Khanna, an associate editor of The Straits Times. "Our solution is to save more and more, but the costs have kept on rising," he noted. "We have to look into it."
High medical costs are even deterring couples from producing more babies, he said.
Another member of the panel, Tommy Bartshukoff, chairman of consultancy firm Avenir Holdings, said the medicine he was prescribed in his home country of Switzerland is much cheaper than those he gets here in Singapore. The medicine he gets from the two countries are of different brands, but are essentially the same, he said. "Doctors here apparently make money in prescribing certain brands."
Panelist Walter Theseira, an associate economics professor at the Singapore University of Social Science and a Nominated Member of Parliament, said he didn't think such unethical practices are prevalent in the public healthcare sector in Singapore, where a strict tender system, under which contracts are awarded only to suppliers of medical equipment and drugs who offer the lowest price. "We have to make a distinction between the private and public sector," he said.
A member from the floor at the forum, who identified herself as being from Denmark, wondered why employment insurance is not offered in Singapore, and asked if it would be provided in the future.
Professor Chew, who has just written a paper on the subject, said he didn't think this would ever happen. Employment benefits come only with a minimum wage policy, which the Singapore government has repeatedly rejected, he said.
He added that it would be confusing to have minimum wage and employment insurance here, where one third of the workforce are foreigners.
In fact, he pointed out, foreign workers act as a buffer against unemployment for Singaporeans because the foreign workers would be the first to go in layoffs.
Professor Chew said there's also the Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) scheme, which supports employment in Singapore.
This scheme can be sustained by the foreign worker levy, which brings in more money for the government than is doled out under the WIS scheme, he said.
The forum also discussed briefly the ways to scale up small and medium-sized enterprises and how funds are administered to help them.
The other members on the panel were Daphne Ng, chief executive officer of technology firm JEDTrade, and Song Seng Wun, a director of CIMB Private Banking.
