The Cost of Health

I've known 4 people who have had a bypass surgery. I've known 5 people close to me who have died of a heart attack. Out of that 5 people, 2 of them had a bypass surgery, yet they didn't make it.

Recently, with my housemate's dad waiting for his surgery, I could feel the tension and blood boiling anger towards the supposedly best learning hospital in KL. More than 3 postponement of angiography and angioplasty, they finally came to a conclusion they couldn't do it yesterday. Because he was too "clogged up". All these after more than half year of waiting for a "bed".

No, dimwits of doctors didn't bother checking earlier to assess his condition. They had to be in the middle of the procedure to find that out. And to top it up, he has to now go for another General Practitioner consultation to get another referral to get an appointment with a cardiac surgeon so that his case can go through a case conference session with a group of surgeons before he is given another date to schedule his open-heart bypass surgery WHICH might be postponed again should there be limited "beds".

I watch alot of TV. Grey's anatomy being my favorite, I couldn't help wonder how "Christina Yang" would be boot-licking and turning on her charms to try and get in on this surgery. On how "Meredith Grey" would turn on her poor little girl whose family you wrecked charms to "Chief Webber" so that she could scrub in to the surgery. How "Alex Karev" would pick on "Lexie Grey's" lexie-pedia brains to try and score a scrub in. On how "Izzie Stevens" would probably cut my friend's father's LVAD wires to make sure he has that surgery in time. And I wonder, besides walking to the nearest restaurants wearing their crisp white coats and stethoscopes around their necks, do our Malaysian doctors really give a damn about you?

As my friend's dad joked over his dinner last night (he was discharged from the hospital with 8 blockages, a total of 200 percent blockage because of the lack of beds) that he was a walking ticking time bomb, I swear i could peek into my housemate's head and watched her fears swimming around. Yet, it was a situation, where there was just no choice for but to wait.

A government subsidized bypass surgery, which is arguably one of the MOST common performed procedures due to our years of guilty pleasures of nasi lemak, roti canai and goreng pisang. Yet, what is most common, is not made affordable. For those who can afford to pay (RM 25,000) for the specialist wing, then they are lucky and do not have to wait on God's grace alone.

We wonder why there is a brain drain in the medical sector. Beside the crap peanuts money we offer our doctors, any doctor with a conscience would rather set up their own practice or flee the country to somewhere where medical attention is not really part of the whole exploitative economy plot where the rich grow richer, and the poor, just get fucked.

4.7 billion was spent on submarines which were faulty and is now lying at the bottom of our Port Klang ocean bed. Do the math and see how many people we could have saved...