APRIL 25 — The Ministry of Health’s directive for private hospitals and clinics to display drug prices is, on the surface, a welcome move.
As a proponent of transparency and the democratisation of health information, I support any initiative that empowers patients to better understand their care.
But let’s not confuse visibility with reform.
The issue isn’t whether medication prices should be published. It’s that the ministry continues to fixate on symptoms while ignoring the underlying disease.
Private healthcare providers have long borne the weight of systemic inefficiencies — many of which remain invisible to the public, yet are critical to keeping our clinics and hospitals running.
Take the average clinic. Consultation fees are regulated. But the cost of operations — staff wages, utilities, rent, digital systems, clinical waste disposal — is not.
Since these cannot be itemised, they are often quietly embedded into the cost of medications and consumables. This isn’t price gouging. It’s arithmetic.
It’s survival.
And if that’s true for a clinic, imagine the scale of complexity in a hospital.
Standby ICUs, compliance audits, 24/7 staffing, emergency response teams, and essential, life-saving medications that must be stocked — ready for use at any moment — not because they’re used every day, but because not having them when needed isn’t an option. Even if they expire untouched, their presence is part of what makes care safe, not wasteful.
Now, we’re told to display drug prices — as though doing so will magically resolve affordability.
So the real question isn’t should we display prices. It’s: How do we reflect the true cost of care in a way that is both transparent and sustainable?
Or — if we’re to embrace this newfound devotion to transparency — should we also list the price of electricity, sterilisation, round-the-clock readiness, and the cost of clinical silence in the middle of the night?
Because those costs don’t disappear when paracetamol’s price is displayed. They simply shift — somewhere else on the bill, somewhere less questioned.
Will this directive lower costs for patients — or merely force healthcare providers to repackage the same burden in other line items, in ways less visible but no less necessary?
And perhaps more cynically: is this truly about empowering patients—or simply redirecting scrutiny to the private sector, while leaving the structural inefficiencies of the larger system conveniently untouched?
If the ministry is sincere about making healthcare more transparent and affordable, then the more meaningful move would be to work with private providers to reconfigure how medical bills are structured — so that they reflect the actual cost of running a safe, compliant, and high-functioning healthcare facility.
Without that, the price display directive exists in a vacuum, stripped of context, divorced from operational reality.
Transparency, in its purest form, is necessary. But transparency without honesty, context, or courage to confront the bigger picture becomes what many policies have become — an elegant gesture in place of meaningful reform.
Patients deserve clarity. But more than that, they deserve a healthcare system honest enough to say: care costs more than just the medicine.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
