JULY 15 — Public hospitals were never meant to resemble private hospitals. They exist precisely because profit-driven care leaves people behind.
Yet with Rakan KKM, we are asked to accept the idea that the same tax-funded wards can be quietly turned into pay-per-use zones, where money determines how quickly you see a doctor.
This is not some academic worry.
Private hospitals exist to make money; no one disputes it. But public hospitals are built on a simple promise: when you are sick, you are equal to everyone else.
That is not a sentimental slogan. It is the only reason taxpayers agree to fund a system meant to serve all, not just the fortunate.
So why is the government so determined to blur that line? Why, just as subsidies are being clawed back and new taxes are piled onto families already stretched thin, must Malaysians be told they should pay extra for the privilege of timely care in hospitals they already own?
And what of the resources this will quietly consume?
Specialists and nurses are not idling in abundance. They are already stretched so thin that entire wards function on life support.
In the Klang Valley hospitals, nurse-to-patient ratios sit at 1 to 10, far below safe standards, while over 20 per cent of specialist positions remain vacant.
Yet we are told this scheme will have no impact. As if time and skill can be conjured out of nothing and from nowhere.
As if rationing what little manpower exists to serve paying patients is somehow not a form of abandonment.
Proponents call this pragmatism. A necessary compromise to stop the talent exodus.
But when did it become acceptable policy to imitate everything we once criticised?
If public hospitals now run on “pay more, get more,” what sets them apart from private hospitals except the logo over the door?
Is it only a question of which government-linked company gets to collect the fees?
Imagine if a government school declared that to keep the best teachers, it would sell “premium education plans” to the wealthy for faster grading, smaller classes, better facilities.
Would we call that modernisation? Or would we recognise it as the thin end of the wedge?
Or picture the fire department offering “express response packages,” promising to save homes that have signed up and paid first.
Would we nod approvingly and call that innovation? Should the police auction off faster investigations to crime victims who can afford a premium plan?
Rakan KKM is not simply a new revenue stream. It is a confession that the government no longer believes public goods can survive without a market price tag attached.
That citizens must pay twice, once in taxes, again at the counter, to claim the care they have already funded.
If public hospitals and private hospitals become indistinguishable in practice, why pretend there is still any difference in principle?
What becomes of the promise that no Malaysian would be left behind just because they cannot pay?
We are told this is not privatisation. Perhaps on paper it isn’t. But in spirit, it is something worse: a slow surrender. A cynical rebranding of inequality as reform.
Next time the ministry calls healthcare a right, they should add the footnote: terms and conditions, and your wallet, apply.
