The sudden postponement of the scheme to privatise the National Heart Institute (IJN) suggests that the government under-estimated the depth of public opposition to the move.
The postponement comes just a day after Najib revealed that the green light had been given to Sime Darby to acquire a majority stake.
The Umno elite appear to be out of touch not only with the masses but also with their own BN component parties such as the MCA, which is opposing the privatisation. Or were they just testing the waters (to gauge public reaction), as some of you suggest?
To me, the real heroes are the 33 IJN specialists (out of a total of 35) who stood up to oppose the move. Their stand is all the more commendable as chances are they would have stood to gain in terms of a more lucrative pay package. It is great to know there are public-spirited specialists in Malaysia, for whom money is not everything – something which the corporate predators find hard to understand.
So far, no real credible rationale has been given for wanting to hand over IJN to Sime Darby on a silver platter. If the government lacks funds for IJN, how will it help if Sime Darby takes over? (Amazing the government has plenty of funds to send an angkasawan into space and think of buying Eurocopters.)
Sime Darby is not going to pump in money into IJN for nothing. To recover their investment cost, eventually they will have to raise patients’ fees or focus on “medical tourism” – at the expense of the many poor Malaysians who need proper and affordable health care.
This is what Sime Darby has in mind for IJN (from The Edge):
Ahmad Zubir cited IJN’s brand and reputation, the institute’s full-paying patients, the synergies, vast opportunities in the sector, and the group’s overall healthcare plan, including the lucrative medical tourism segment, as the commercial reasons for the proposed acquisition.
“There is demand from overseas,” he said, adding that he did not believe medical tourism contributed significantly to IJN’s business now. He said IJN would be part of an aggressive plan that would see Sime Darby Healthcare and IJN widen their reach in the domestic and regional markets for the brands and their staff.
This is the same Sime Darby that pulled out from financing the Bakun undersea cables. Why couldn’t it raise financing and pump in money there (not that the Bakun undersea cables make economic sense) when the government needed it to? Why does it prefer IJN? Now that commodity prices have slumped, perhaps it is seeking a “safe haven” to invest in. What safer haven then controlling the potentially lucrative “market” for coronary health care, the company must have thought. No fear of falling demand there – as people will be forced to cough up if their lives are at stake.
Najib says the postponement of the deal has nothing to do with the by-election in Kuala Terengganu. Right, sure. Had the deal not been postponed, this issue alone could have been explosive and caused the BN all sorts of problems in the by-election campaign. The opposition would have gone to town with it and torn the BN campaign to shreds – and rightly so.
It is interesting to see the criticism by certain Pakatan leaders of the IJN privatisation.
On the one hand, the Pakatan leaders are opposing the IJN privatisation because it will undermine the public health care system and hurt the lower-income group.
On the other, the Pakatan-ruled states are themselves promoting medical tourism – which lures experienced doctors and specialists away from the general hospitals, including those in rural areas and smaller towns, and undermines the public health care system. (That leaves our general hospitals, which treat the vast majority of Malaysian patients, desperately short of specialists, experienced doctors and skilled personnel.) But then, isn’t this the same sort of medical tourism which Sime Darby envisages for IJN?
So it’s a bit rich for the Pakatan MPs to criticise the IJN privatisation on the one hand while actively promoting medical tourism on the other!
Why dont Sime Darby built another IJN type of hospital themselves? why suddenly hand over IJN after they have completed a new wing building hospital?. It is all benefit to all those cronies as they do not need to spend huge amount of money to built another IJN and yet suddenly able to reap profit without coming out money.
IJn should never be privatise and if govt later force this rulling, please gather all rakyat to mobile massive demo against them.
MCA is another hippocrate as earlier the health minister is saying privitase of IJN is good for the IJN itself? MCA where is your stand? Do you ask the rakyat opinion or do you conduct a public opinion whether IJN should be privatise?. We should all kick out BN in another GE.
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medical service should never be a business. it shold never have been privatised. the same standard of medical service should be available whether they are poor or rich because having less money does not make one less human.
health service and education should be completely subsidised by the government. every effort should be done towards this goal. health service is a basic human right, be they saints or crooks.
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Anil
I think there should be a check and balance even for Pakatan Rakyat and u are doing just fine
Focus on the real issue here which is IJN privatisation.
Dont go on shooting the opposition all the time
Take care and keep up the good work bro
Peace
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The Malaysian public are wide awake 7/24 especially after 8/3/08,any attempt by the BN regime to change anything is scrutinize deeply and we have a strong check and balance team in Pakatan Rakyat at Parliament level.The public had enough from this lying…BN party!!.Whatever spoken by the government is full of b..s..!!,this BN regime as never learn its lesson and the only thing left to do is kill off this party in the 13th GE at the ballot box.The IJN is one of the last left by the ruling party which is not privatise by the pirates.These pirates will not let up so easily and there will be further attempt once the hoo-ha cools down,its up to all Malaysian to ensure the pirates don’t take over the IJN.
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It is not because of umno elite out of touch, just take a look at who is behind Sime Darby board of directors and shareholders, my friend. You will know why in Malaysia privatizing profit and nationalizing losses is hallmark of BN’s governance. The answer is written all over if you bother to dig deeper into Sime Darby corporate structure,why should these Datuk care about ordinary Malaysians live or die???
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When Najib ‘announced’ that Sime Darby will take over IJN, he mentioned that the poor will be taken care of, government will still control the fees charged to it’s patients.
2 issues;
First, how do you define poor people? Is the government going to use Malaysian Employment Act which covers only those earning less than RM1500/month as a yardstick.
The majority of the people in thise country fall into middle income group. And most of the time the need to do a by-pass comes after a person retires. How many of the middle income group can afford this treatment. Please don’t forget the majority of the people in this country are middle class people.
Second, don’t forget capitalism, the service provider sets the price based on supply and demand. Sime Darby is not a welfare organization. The shareholders’ main objective is to make as much profit as possible. It goes not only to Sime Darby but to all corporations. So it totally irrational the reasons given for the privatization move.
TDM introduced privatization of major government services; TNB, Roads, Telecom, etc, etc. Yes, in the beginning people saw some improvements in the quality of service, but after 10 years, the privatization has become a burden to the people. Example, PLUS, TNB makes huge profits every year, but do you see a drop in their rates.
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Final point on this topic.
Caveat: It is not my intention to teach anyone to suck any medical, business economics or marketing eggs here but I don’t want to make any wrong simplistic assumptions either. Like my young brother. He was unfortunately killed off by bad medical practice and medical negligence in Malaysia simply because he went to the wrong public hospital (as he had failed to renew his just lapsed insurance policy) and his family unfortunately compounded the grave error by unforgivably leaving him at the mercy of those at that incompetent public hospital. So you see, I have a personal vested interest in this topic.
In my opinion which is based on personal experience in the health sector, Anil is absolutely right to say that private hospitals will succeed in luring away the cream of the nation’s medical crop because most medical personnel, like most others too, naturally and rightfully so, want the earn the best wages possible to get equitable payback and the best return on their investment in their expensive medical degrees.
And as private hospitals are normally better kitted-out and can also afford to offer/fund better compensation deals and working conditions (because of the higher revenues earned from private patient fees and the more careful management (usually) of their resources because of the profit-centred model) the public hospitals will naturally lose out in the long-term if they cannot match these better compensation packages to retain the better-trained and more experienced doctors/consultants to naturally fuel the knowledge-based training/learning and shared knowledge research that is essential to evolve medical skill and practice to a higher level of expertise in these public hospitals and the nation as a whole.
In a pure capitalist economy, the powerful law of market forces of demand and supply and market-based competition based on the profit-based and return on capital employed models will naturally win out. And the areas in the medical field that will naturally suffer neglect and loss will be shared knowledge-based training, learning and natural up-skilling of junior doctors and critically, the expensive but vital research whose value is hard to quantify, justify and relate back into the profit and investment models for business decision-making.
So suffice to say that if left to the “rational return/greed-oriented” market, the eventual natural losers will be ALL in the nation. And particularly penalised unjustly for being “poor” will be all those who cannot afford to pay the annually increasing private hospital medical fees (upped to offset the market-based annual inflationary increases to base expenditure) OR to pay for their correspondingly increasing to-keep-pace-with-increasing- private-medical-fees medical health insurance premiums. These people will naturally lose out because they will not get the best medical treatment available simply because they cannot pay for it.
Due to these natural economic and market “laws” the Government must step in to regulate the market for medical products and services (as it must for the education sector also) so that all citizens have access to the best in medical care and expertise to service their medical needs fairly, and medical research taking place in the nation thrives through the natural synergy of shared funding, shared learning and shared experience that happens in BOTH public and private hospitals.
That is required for social justice to manifest. And it is the Government’s number one task and priority to deliver social justice to the People that it is elected to serve.
A Government is not part of the private sector OR part of the public sector. It is part and parcel of BOTH sectors and so its guiding oversight is needed for both sectors to operate effectively. Direct case in point is the current world financial meltdown due to Governments everywhere not sufficiently understanding the critically-vital financial system and the behavioural aspects of greed in the financial sector thereby failing to regulate the sector adequately and so negligently and unacceptably leaving it all in the (very) greedy hands of the financial sector’s hordes of gamblers (yes, “nice word” speculating is “bad” gambling for all intents and purposes) and inexperienced but overpaid smart alecs.
But the really hard part is that the Government must first UNDERSTAND how to apply appropriate and balanced oversight over both these key sectors. To do this it must understand how to deal with human behavioural aspects as well as the business-model differences required to make both sectors thrive at the right level in order to derive both synergistic shared cooperation and incentivising free competition between the two.
Private sector investment in the medical field is to be welcomed as it is in any other field as long as the Government sets in place fair, workable and sustainable environments. PFI deals (where this is needed) will work as long as they are WIN-WIN deals where increased funds generated from these PFI-deals are ploughed back to fund medical learning and research so that all in the nation can get access to the better medical care and treatment as a natural consequence of this catalytic process.
And you know what? Experience teaches all those who are open to learning that there is NO REAL difference between public-sector business and private-sector business as long as both have good leaders and managers and good business practices.
So it is eminently possible for both the public and private sector to cooperate successfully to get to win-win destinations if both understand where each one is coming from and going to and as long as there is no hidden agenda on the negotiating table or worse, toxic under-the-table corruption to bust the win-win model micro-objective, and if the PFI micro-objective is balanced to the social justice macro-objective.
End of final….and sorry, long and boring (and snore-inducing?) thesis-like post….smile.
“Imagine Power To The People” John Lennon.
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Dear Anil et all,
Why do Sime want to take over IJN when they can build another specialist center elsewhere, bigger and better staffed with the best doctors money can buy (out) of M’sia? They have enough land in Selangor and the surrounding areas to even build a private runway to ferry all those rich, chinese Indons or Singaporean and even rich Filipinos (Chinese).
IJN is sitting on billions and billions worth of RM, ie prime land in the heart of KL. (Perhaps) the smart/crooked politicians hope to takeover this land then sell it off to another of their vehicles, stating that this land can be used for other more profitable ventures, then IJN can be moved to a remote place in S’gor which need not be sitting on prime land.
We need to look beyond medical causes and think like them…
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