Government's health consultation paper dismissed as 'a massive piece of rhetoric'

The head of the Harvard Report team hit back yesterday at the Government for calling its projections on the sustainability of the health-care system wrong and urged it to release its own calculations.

Speaking from Boston, Professor William Hsiao of Harvard University's School of Public Health said the Government's own consultation paper was 'a massive piece of rhetoric'.

If the plan were implemented, he warned: 'Five years from now Hong Kong will have a more serious problem and at that time will have to look for a more fundamental solution.'

The Harvard Report, released in April 1999, pointed to fundamental problems of an outdated and fragmented health-care system that is Hospital Authority-driven and exhibiting a variable quality in health services. It also warned that the system's long-term financial sustainability was questionable - the health budget would swallow 20 to 23 per cent of the budget by 2016.

But in an interview with the South China Morning Post last month, Secretary for Health and Welfare Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong said that when the Government reviewed the Harvard sums, it found the health-care system was not as unsustainable as Harvard made it out to be, and its problems could be addressed through less radical changes. He refused to reveal the administration's calculations.

The Government has proposed a post-retirement health protection account in which employees, from the age of 40 to 65, contribute one to two per cent of their wages.

The Harvard Report proposed two compulsory risk-sharing schemes: an individual savings account to buy long-term care insurance upon retirement, and compulsory insurance for unexpected large medical expenses. Employees and employers would contribute a combined total of three per cent of wages.