Based on these new calculations, Dr Yeoh said the Government was confident that the proposed health-protection account - in which employees and their spouses contribute one to two per cent of their wages from the age of 40 to 65 - was viable.

The savings plan was outlined in the Green Paper on health-care reform last month.

Calls were made for the bureau to release its calculations on the viability of the plan.

'I personally think it would be very arrogant to say the Harvard economics professor is wrong and his projections are wrong,' Derek Gould, a retired principal assistant secretary for health and welfare, said last month.

He was referring to Professor William Hsiao, who headed the 15-member team of the Harvard University economists, researchers, statisticians and epidemilogists.

Dr Yeoh said the Harvard projections were based on a period of 'robust' economic growth in Hong Kong, from 1989-97.

'If you just take the decade where you're spending the most, obviously your projections would go through the roof,' Dr Yeoh said.

When the Government looked at the sums and extended the period from the early 1980s using the same Harvard methodology, 'our sums came out differently', Dr Yeoh said.

But he refused to release the Government's calculations, saying: 'It confuses the picture.'

Dr Yeoh conceded changes needed to be made, as espoused by the Harvard Report. 'There are a lot of pressures on the system and we really need to do things to address them,' he said. 'The urgency is not a crisis, but if we don't look at it and take things for granted, it can very quickly go to a crisis.'

Dr Yeoh denied the decision was a political one, stressing that the option being proposed was 'evolutionary - probably the least painful'. 'I guess what we're trying to do is to minimise the amount that the public needs to shoulder and of course we have done all we can [to minimise the burden] to the extent that people have been saying, how come this is 'too little too late'?' he said.

He said the government review was based on three assumptions: continued investment in health care of an estimated 14.5 per cent of the Budget; a revamp in public hospital fees and charges; and a long-term financing scheme to complement the investments.

It also assumes technological advancements and population and demographic growth of 2.3 per cent a year.

On the revamp of fees, Dr Yeoh said the Government had hired an American academic and his team to do the initial groundwork to prepare for a fee review.

He said any fee adjustments would be moderate and fees would remain affordable.

Dr Yeoh said it was too early to say whether the public consultation, which ends in March, was going satisfactorily.

'I think people have very short memories - they have forgotten that in the 1980s we had a lot of problems with our public hospital system,' he said. 'I still remember the days in the 1980s when I was working at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Every day, camp beds after camp beds. It wasn't such a long time ago.'

Ho Hei-wah, spokesman for the Patients Rights Group, said he would urge Dr Yeoh to release more 'substantial figures and information' to enable public consultation. He said he was disappointed with the consultation because of the lack of details. 'How come the Government can write a blank cheque, write anything on it and expect the public to approve it in principle?' he asked.