Does Government Have Killing License?

Last post I discussed about doctors' killing license, and now I would like to share about government role in Malaysia health care. Recently our PM claimed that our country facing financial crisis and need to cut down fuel subsidy and a lot of government project and expenses for example minister entertainment allowance. This sounds quite fair as whole country need to work together while facing financial crisis. However when I realized that ministry of Health also need to cut budget for 10% I start wondering what the hell that our leaders are thinking about. Let me explain how does it affect our health care service from the point of view of a MO from a district hospital.

1. Not enough budget to buy medical equipment and medicine. Though government never order formally stop buying new equipment and medicine, but it'll issue notice that no more extra budget for buying medicine/instrument, if u want to live with limited budget, the only way stop using expensive medicine and start using the cheaper medicine. It may not be as good but government doctor need to face it. Recently one patient organized a press conference complaining that H Seremban not giving the expensive psychiatric drug which he usually given by UM Medical Center and was replaced with cheaper drug which worry him the cheaper drug may not work for him. And oh yes, don't u doubt why he stop getting medicine from UMMC? It's because UMMC start to "half-privatize" its service and patients need to pay in full amount for medicine (few hundreds dollars)instead of paying subsidized price as before(RM50 per month) in order to cut down government finance burden. So don't u agree that our government have some " license" to allow them to provide cheaper and may be substandard treatment to his people but letting front line staffs like doctors taking all the blame?

2. Over time claim: our health care workers are always insufficient. We may need 6 ambulance drivers,5 medical assistants(MA) and 4 nurses per shift in a district hospital Accident and Emergency Department. In fact, we may only have 3 drivers, 1 nurse and 3 MA working(why always insufficient in health care?because health care workers work the hardest compare to other government department with similar salary. Thus lots of health care workers leave government when they feel that "it's enough."). When patients are too many to handle at any time, driver,nurse, MA need to work extra shift and claim OT. However there is a rule in government law that states "government servant can't claim OT more 30% of their basic monthly." when hospital budget is enough, H. Director will allow these claim even it exceed 30 % (as 30 % is only few hundreds dollars that can be easily exceed after few extra shift.) Now? PM cut down every budget and H. Director found that there is not enough money to
pay for salary+ OT, so Director announce that OT will be allowed only up to 30 %. So what will happen? No pay? Then no work! When ambulance driver not enough but we still have patient awaiting ambulance to rescue them, no driver is willing to come work extra shift. When nurse and MA not enough to handle big amount of patient load, no one willing to come and work extra shift, thus shortfall and negligence will happen. So who is the loser? It's the patient and the health care staffs! Patients may be dying and the staff will be burden and take the blame. All these can be avoided, if our government care more about its staff and its people. Increase health care staff salary (equivalent to their workload), hire more staff, pay their OT in full as a token of appreciation for their hard job. Our government sure have other better way to save money (eg stop sending Monkeys for space traveling, investigate those corrupted politician and freeze their illegal asset, stop saving not performing GLC like MAS and Proton.) But to sacrifice our people life and health? PM and ministers, what the hell that u are thinking? This sound like our government have the Killing License to kill his people just because they want to save some penny with price of patients life and welfare. Please do something, our politicians, if u are really caring about our people.