Public Eye | Public Eye: Tam Yiu-chung’s VIP hospital treatment is a symptom of a wider problem

Remember when public hospitals put up signs warning patients of 24-hour waits during the recent flu season? What if a sneezing Tam Yiu-chung had turned up? Hospital staff would likely have whizzed him past the long lines of patients. He is, after all, former chairman of the loyalist DAB party. Would student leader Joshua Wong Chi-fung – who’s a bigger political name than Tam – receive VIP treatment too? Don’t be silly. He would be told to wait his turn with the other plebs. We should thank Queen Elizabeth Hospital for helping Tam queue-jump for minor surgery last week. Its royal treatment for Tam, which even allowed his wife to wait in a sterile area, came as a timely reminder of the sickness that has long afflicted our society. It is a sickness that spawned Occupy, localism, and riots.

Tam tried to wriggle free of the scandal by saying sorry. He even blamed the doctor for his red-carpet treatment. That’s so sick. He neither offered to wait his turn nor advise his wife against putting patients at risk by contaminating a sterile area. That says a lot about him. Our public hospitals excel, but don’t buy Hospital Authority chief executive Leung Pak-yin’s claim that everyone is treated equally. If that’s true, why did Queen Mary Hospital put Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah in a private room after angioplasty in 2009? You try getting one in a public hospital. My late mother was put in an overcrowded ward after emergency angioplasty. Tam’s DAB colleague Chan Han-pan got one, though, for his pregnant wife at Kwong Wah Hospital for a discount HK$100 a day. Legislators get an annual medical allowance of HK$32,400? Is this a use-it-or-lose-it allowance or did both pocket some money by using public hospitals?

Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor says the government needs to conquer three mountains – the fleecing of the people by the Link Reit, the MTR, and bosses who partially pocket the pensions of workers through unfair MPF rules. Sorry, lady, but there are many more mountains that need conquering. A handful of tycoons control our lives. Bureaucrats get fat pay rises even when everyone else face cuts. Elderly people haul garbage for a living. Affordable housing is a dream. I have said since 2010 we must wake up and smell the revolution. We have since seen Occupy, localism, and riots. Tam’s privileged treatment was just a symptom of the sickness our leaders dare not treat. Wake up now or expect worse than riots.