10 questions for DPM Gan and Health Minister Ong

Healthcare financing in Singapore

- Salma Khalik

Singapore is known for its good healthcare, which has contributed to its people being among the longest-lived in the world, with an average lifespan exceeding 83 years.

However, with an ageing population pushing up demand for healthcare and costs going up year after year, will Singapore be able to continue offering good healthcare at affordable prices? Healthcare financing was the topic of discussion when Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, who helmed the Ministry of Health for a decade, and Health

Minister Ong Ye Kung sat down with The Straits Times for an interview.

Here are the 10 questions that ST posed to them:

1 In many developed countries, the government provides free medical care for its citizens. Why doesn't Singapore do the same?

GAN KIM YONG (GKY): There's really no such thing as free healthcare because someone has to pay for the costs of the drugs, the pharmaceuticals, the facilities, the doctors and the nurses, and the healthcare workers. So the question really is: Who pays for it? Ultimately, it's the taxpayer who has to pay for it.

In Singapore's case, we have a very comprehensive healthcare payment system: what we call S+3Msgovernment subsidies plus MediSave, MediFund and MediShield.

With S+3Ms, we ensure that healthcare will always be affordable mind that we must always encourage the appropriate use of healthcare, the right-siting of healthcare. This will help to make sure that overall healthcare costs will be moderated.

ONG YE KUNG (OYK): The problem is that when healthcare is free, and it's all paid for already by taxes, But it is also important to bear in people have no discipline. The depeople have no discipline. The demand just booms.

So today, to get a simple X-ray at the NHS (Britain's National Health Service), the wait is nine months to one year. The last I checked, there were seven million people on the waiting list. The NHS is crumbling under the demand.