To live well and healthy

For many of us who are in our twenties or younger, we are healthy youths who, i suppose, have not succumbed to unimaginable illnesses or the legions of lurking diseases and health problems that are insidiously present in this world. We eat freely and give nary a thought about what it would be like if our health is seized away from us. Still, i've observed that in today's fashion-consicous and image/appearance-obsessive era - no thanks in part to the proliferating media - many people are making deliberate choices when it comes to their diet and lifstyle needs. By and large, i have many friends who generally avoid fast food restaurants, and quite many of us in fact really like our veggies. This is all very good but equally important is the motive behind our choices.

But that's not what i wanted to talk about. In the span of a week, i've made two trips to two hospitals, one is to visit a very ill Uncle who had a liver transplant many years ago and have remained in poor health since. The other is to visit a troubled ex-classmate who is otherwise all right in health. It was the former trip which really dawned on me the enormity of the problem of health care in every human society. I'd bet that many friends are probably like me: we ain't have a clue about the medishield, medisave and - are there more? - other insurances that are actually covered under our name. Despite the numerous times that the CPF board sent me an inordinate amount of materials and papers and forms with regard to all the medi-policies, I've never seriously read and understood them. A professor once told my class that in the present day, the problem we have is not a lack of information - it's information overload. And i guess that in a certain sense explains my reluctance - even aversion - to read up the information that actually matters a great deal.

Then the hospital visit made me realise that health care, both health costs and services, above many other public issues, is a topic of perennial utmost concern. The elites and wealthy in every society may not ever need to worry about this; they have the monetary wherewithal to see that should they fall very ill, they would have no problem gaining access to doctors and health treatment. Money can't buy you happiness, but it can certainly solve many problems. By and large, however, the rest of society are not as fortunate as the minority of wealthy elite.

Perhaps a classic example to be used in economics, health care - medical workers, medical equipment etc - is a finite resource and demand for it always outstrips supply. This may not be prevalent in Singapore but there's no doubt that demand for health care resources will always be high - because every human is fallible and will fall ill and die one day. It is therefore a measure of state efficiency how a country manages the problem. Illnesses and diseases are blind, and they do not choose between the rich and the poor, but therein, the stark reality is that the ability to receive treatment differs vastly between the two groups. I am talking both in terms of gaining access to treatment as well as the quality of treatment.

Each time parliament spoke about health care or that there are some major bills passed to improve medishield and medisave for the population, especially the elderly, i never bothered even to read the headlines. They always provoke little interest in me. Then when i was at the hospital visiting my Uncle, i started to understand that that topic which i couldn't care any less about is precisely very significant, very tremendous. When my uncle was sent in to the hospital very ill and with liver malfunctioning, he was not able to receive immediate attention only until after some time when my aunt had to make a great amount of effort to seek necessary medical attention. Only two days in ICU, the costs had ballooned to more than S$8k. As my uncle has stopped working since his liver failure and after he had had a transplant, he has little in his medisave to help with his hospitalisation costs. Thankfully my aunt has been a most strong lady who has been working tirelessly all these years. I'm not sure if monetary help has flown in from elsewhere but there's a big, pretty close-knit family network that i'm sure has been instrumental in lending support in various ways.

It's never a pleasant thing to visit a hospital but the sad truth is that at some point in our lives, we most certainly would have gone there at least once, whether or not it's to visit someone or to seek treatment ourselves. When compared to the dozens of poor developing nations, i guess it's not a bad thing after all for it means that hospital health care is prevalent in our society. It's easy to go on and on about how the poor will always be disadvantaged in this situation, that life is frail and so on. I have no wish to do so. Personally, i hope to take personal responsibility for my own welfare and health so that i will never have to find myself in a situation where i have to burden my family.
It's just too huge a burden to afford.