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d finger by routine suture that ultimately deforms it for the sake of earning the surgery fee when the situation requires a specialist in microsurgery of which he is not? What happens in the midst of an open abdominal surgery by a surgeon specialising in gastroenterology when the patient develops heart plications – will the heart specialist or surgeon (in the context of a private hospital) be ready on standby to assist。 or if such a specialist is not around, does that mean the ―stomach surgeon‖ will try to make the best of the situation by trying his hands on the heart as well。 and even if the heart specialist is available to be called upon for assistance, will he negotiate and requests for a mitment on payment of his fees first? I can go on and on with litanies of situations fraught with conflicts of interest between bottom line profit concerns and the ethical values of the Hippocratic oath. The question for physicians and the medical profession to answer is. ?How do you balance and reconcile these conflicting imperatives?‘ And the question for the government to answer is, ?What are you doing in terms of public health care to provide cheaper and more alternatives for those of us who are plain disillusioned with private hospitals and their sickening maximisation of profits?‘ At this moment, we have to wait (say) five hours in a government hospital for a blood test to determine if our condition is serious enough to be warded, then join a queue of 400 persons waiting in line for dispensation of medicine and wait up to four months for the earliest available date for surgery.