Lim Meng Kin, an expert on health care financing at the National University of Singapore, avoided the hard-sell treatment for the city state's National Health Plan during an international symposium in Hong Kong at the weekend.
'Context', he said, 'is the key.' Any place must take into account its historical, cultural, political and socio-economic factors when establishing its own health system.
Professor Lim was addressing participants at the conference on Hong Kong's health financing reform, organised by the University of Hong Kong's Medical and Health Research Network.
He remained non-committal on the pros and cons of the six options listed in a government consultation paper on health care financing. But the academic was telling the plain, simple truth when he said that 'nobody can help Hong Kong decide what to do'. Only its people, he said, could choose what kind of society they want, and what values define it.
William Hsiao, of the Harvard School of Public Health - who is better known as the key author of the government-commissioned Harvard health care report published for consultation in 1999 - made a similar point at the symposium. He said a key issue that needed to be addressed was equity: who would bear the burden of financing, and who would benefit from the system? Although they are vitally important, the issue of values, and principles like equity, have not figured prominently in the blitz of government publicity on the medical reform consultation paper.
In its paper, the administration went to great lengths to present a gloomy, long-term scenario of Hong Kong's health care system. Officials, confronted with a litany of challenges ranging from an ageing population to the costs of new medical technology and treatments, have sought to convince the community that time is running out for a solution to these problems, and that failure to come up with a new system soon would mean a delay of at least 10 years.
Those messages are in line with the problem-solving mindset manifested by Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen in his policy address last October. Warning of a surging demand for health care services, he said: 'We need to plan ahead for these challenges so that Hong Kong will maintain its competitive edge.'
