Referring to reports about Malaysia’s commitment to the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), PSM strongman Michael Jeyakumar said such an agreement would spell disaster for public health facilities.
Noting that government hospitals were already experiencing problems due to a draining of talent to the private sector, he said free trade agreements would open the floodgates.
“Government hospitals will have even fewer specialists and good nurses as they will naturally move to the private sector because it pays better,” he said, adding that it was easy for private hospitals to identify good members of the government medical staff and pinch them.
“That is why one of the things that PSM is asking for is a freeze on the private medical sector. The more it expands, the more staff it will take away from the government.
“Even now we have to wait a long time before meeting a specialist at a government hospital. It will only get worse.”
Jeyakumar is the MP for Sungai Siput and a practising doctor.
Last Wednesday, PSM proposed its “People’s Charter” to fight international trade agreements that it considered unfair and favoured big corporations.
These agreements include the RCEP, which Putrajaya sees as a replacement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the US-driven proposal from which Washington pulled out last year with the presidential election of Donald Trump.
The Asean-driven RCEP is aimed at economically integrating 16 countries in Asia and Oceania.
Jeyakumar said it would pave the way for international companies to open hospitals that would demand more and stronger patents and copyrights.
“They can then just come in and set up a hospital, and you cannot say no,” he said. “If you say no, it means you are taking away their rights as investors and they can sue the country.
“These big private international hospitals will bring in a few specialists from overseas and steal staff from all the government hospitals by offering them better salaries and benefits.”
Health Minister S Subramaniam recently said the number of healthcare professionals quitting the government service was rising every year due to the remuneration gap between the public and private sectors.
Jeyakumar said PSM was also calling for a rejection of any attempt to strengthen intellectual property protection beyond what was set under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, an international legal agreement between member nations of the World Trade Organisation.
“The idea that knowledge can be owned by corporations which then use the ownership to create monopolies that jack up the prices of medicines to astronomical levels is repugnant to us,” he said.
“Knowledge is something that is built on from one generation to the next. Yes, brilliant insights and hard work should be rewarded, but certainly not monopoly rights for over a period of 20 years.”
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