These are the highlights from this chapter of The People’s Manifesto. For the full chapter, please download the manifesto here [PDF].
Equitable Healthcare for All

Access to public healthcare is a basic human right. It must be affordable and accessible for all. No one chooses to be ill and so, no one should face financial ruin when attempting to receive the healthcare they need. Relatedly, for patients to receive the care they deserve, healthcare workers need to have safe, humane working conditions. To this end, urgent reforms are needed to ensure that both patients’ and healthcare workers’ basic needs are met.

Click on each subsection to read more about the key issues and demands highlighted in the manifesto

Patients in Singapore’s public healthcare system face ever-increasing healthcare costs. Significant changes to healthcare payment in the last decade - for example, the introduction of a compulsory deductible, co-payment and co-insurance system to access pay outs from Medishield life or integrated shield plans - mean that Singaporeans need to pay much higher out of pocket expenditures for healthcare.

Our Demands

Meeting Patients’ Needs: Healthcare Affordability, Accessibility and Availability

  1. Ensure all patients in the public healthcare system are treated with the same ethical standards of care regardless of their financial status and medical condition
  2. Expand coverage of the following: (i) claim limits to MediShield Life, (ii) conditions claimable under MediSave and the Chronic Disease Management Programme, (iii) medications within the Subsidised Drugs List
  3. Expand MediFund utilisation
  4. Introduce a unified application process for accessing healthcare subsidies across all clusters, and improve transparency of criteria for accessing subsidies
  5. Guarantee access to subsidised public healthcare regardless of residential status, nationality or employment
  6. Intermediate and Long-Term Care Services (ILTC) should be expanded, and subsidies for these services increased.

The Ministry of Health estimates that we will require an increase of more than 82,000 allied health professionals, nurses and support staff by 2030 to meet Singapore’s healthcare needs. However, the lack of safe working conditions for healthcare workers is clearly reflected in the high rates of resignation from the public healthcare sector. This crisis in staffing has persisted since the COVID-19 pandemic, and has implications on how we can continue to staff new hospitals and healthcare facilities safely.

Our Demands

Meeting Healthcare Workers’ Needs: Adequate Rest and Wages

  1. Introduce regulations to ensure safe working hours and staff-to-patient ratios for healthcare workers
  2. Compensate healthcare workers fairly and ensure their qualifications are affordable to attain
  3. Comprehensively review sick leave and annual leave policies