The Editor, Sir:

The official decision taken by the Bruce Golding-led administration to abolish all hospital user fees, was a poor and short-sighted one. The system is not sustainable and will continue just as long as the dissipating funds are available. The abolition of user fees has in effect pulled resources and funding from other areas (including critical areas of the same health-care system) to prop up this illogical policy.

Why does any one think "on many occasions, patients who visit the respective hospitals across the country are having great difficulty accessing the drugs" ? This is surely not a matter of misfortune but is the result of decisions made on the basis of poor analysis.

What some Jamaicans cannot understand is the fact that nothing in life is free. Our health, like our light and other bills, is our responsibility. We have to plan for our health costs like any other financial obligation. Hence, your concern regarding the money patients are being forced to pay to private pharmacies is clouded.

If user fees and medication costs at public facilities was instituted at a subsidised cost to the patients, some amount of burden would be alleviated off the system, making, for patients, the provision of more drugs. These same patients who venture out, though still paying, would not have to be paying that much.

Why are pharmacies at public hospitals not stocking drugs that are being prescribed by those doctors at public hospitals? The answer is clear - there is just not enough money to buy the drugs. What the minister needs to understand is that health care is as much a business as much as it is about caring for people. Implementing a free system is not balancing the tedious equation of cash and care. It is creating a burden on a system that was already on the verge of collapse.

The issue with our health system was never a matter of cost. If you have ever worked in a public-health facility, or do some research before gloating, you would have known that before the abolition of user fees it was already free for those who could not afford. The real problem with our health system is one to do with quality and efficiency - problems that should have been addressed before making it free.

Inefficiency

It is, indeed, a disgrace how inefficient public pharmacies are operated. However, this inefficiency is a widely accepted feature of almost all government-run entities. It is also one which will need the proper manpower and resources to correct (both of which are lacking due to the diversion of funding).

Perhaps the consideration of the Government to privatise public pharmacies is indeed aiming at making these pharmacies more efficient. Government agencies have had a long history of becoming more successful when placed in the hands of private entities.

I am, etc.,

HUEY GRANSTON

kemis_79@hotmail.com

Spanish Town

St Catherine