Is there any more example of privatisation in health care services?
Another disaster was the privatisation of the design and construction of public hospitals. After privatising this function to private consultants, we end up with fungus-ridden new hospitals like the new Specialist Hospital in Johore! What about corporatisation of IJN and University Hospital? The National Heart Institute was the first government hospital to be corporatised. The government has ended up spending more money than expected in subsidies without achieving greater equity in access to care. In the case of the University Hospital, services have become less affordable to many of its old patients. Why change the present system? The government says that the cost of health care is rising. Government spending on health care is about 7 percent of the federal budget. But as we saw earlier, a major factor for the disproportionate increase in health care cost is the privatisation of the pharmaceutical and hospital support services to crony companies. The government also says that people a
