Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) is concerned by the latest development in the national healthcare sector, where large companies are expanding their empire of private hospitals. Sunway Healthcare Holdings, which belongs to Jeffrey Cheah with a net worth of US$4.3 billion (RM18.1 billion), recently announced that it was preparing an initial public offering (IPO) to bankroll an RM1.6 billion development project, which will include a new hospital in Iskandar Puteri, Johor.

Last month, the Thomson Medical Group, which is owned by Singaporean magnate Peter Lim with a net worth of US$1.9 billion (RM8 billion), also announced an RM18 billion megaproject which would also involve the construction of a large-scale private hospital in Johor. According to Forbes, Thomson Hospital Iskandariah will have a capacity of 500 beds, which can be doubled to 1,000.

This is indeed worrying. PSM urges the government to immediately implement a moratorium on new private hospitals for at least the next five years. This is because our country is facing a critical shortage of specialists in the public healthcare system. Around 70% of specialists with over 10 years of experience are now in the private sector, while 70% of patients receive treatment in public hospitals. The shortage of specialists has long been public knowledge, and has been acknowledged by the government itself.

Every time a new private hospital opens, specialists leave the public healthcare system. Recently, the new Sunway Medical Centre Ipoh hospital managed to snag 12 specialists with a ‘top up’ scheme involving wages of up to RM70,000 a month for the first year of service. This lucrative offer would undoubtedly attract overworked specialists from public hospitals facing critical manpower shortages.

This has already increased waiting times for critical procedures in public hospitals to become longer, increasing pressure on patients. Allowing the mushrooming of new private hospitals would only make an already dire situation worse.

PSM believes that the government should focus fully on retaining the specialists it does have, rather than enabling the private sector to profit from poaching specialists from the people’s healthcare system. Undoubtedly, the government will point to its Rakan KKM scheme as a means of retaining specialists. But Rakan KKM is no panacea, as it will cause specialists to be further burdened and hasten their exit from the public healthcare system.

Health is the right of the rakyat, not a commodity to be cheaply traded away. The government must stick to its promise to increase the allocation to the Ministry of Health to 5% of GDP if it is sincere about retaining specialists and strengthening the public healthcare system.

Gandipan Nantha Gopalan

Central committee member,
Parti Sosialis Malaysia