Tick for affordable health care

Just saw the “How to Vote” video on TV.

In my previous post I said that I’ll be putting a tick for whom I’m voting.

Turns out that’s a sure fire way to spoil my vote.

Why you put a cross confounds me. As far as I know a cross is a mistake. Now if a cross is a good thing, I should’ve gotten A’s in school.

Before the “How to Vote” video, there were the official party broadcasts. Each party puts up a representative who gets a chance to have their say on TV.

Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) got something like 2 minutes, Workers’ Party (WP) and Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) got 10 minutes or so, People’s Action Party (PAP) got 20 minutes. The time allotted is based on the number of candidates fielded in this elections.

Now, these party broadcasts always make candidates look terrible. There’s never been a party broadcast that I thought, “my this man/woman is handsome/pretty, he/she has my vote”.

(Okay, maybe that was the intention. To make us vote on the issues.)

In the past, however, in televised party debates, I always suspected that the cameraman gave the PAP got more close ups than opposition candidates who were shot in the most unflattering way – but that’s another matter and cannot be substantiated.

Back to these party broadcasts.

The opposition can be assured that in this case, Lee Hsien Loong (PAP) looked just as bad as you guys – Chee Siok Chin (SDP), Sylvia Lim (WP) and Chiam See Tong (SDA).

Hey you gotta grab points where you can.

Unfortunately for the rest of the opposition, Chee looked the best of the lot, although she spoke in a very clipped manner and obviously has difficulty with “r” since she said “ELP” rather than “ERP”. Sylvia Lim took her eyebrows on a dancing lesson, before finally starting to talk like a normal human being, and I felt like a child in kindergarten listening to grandpa Chiam speak.

Since I’m mudslinging the opposition, why not the PAP? Did you notice how many times Lee blinked? He blinked so much, at such a regular rate, I felt I was being hypnotised. I almost missed what he was saying.

Such as how every Singaporean will get his flat upgraded (forgetting to add, “Except opposition wards”, because they’re still using it as a carrot in Potong Pasir) and how he’ll address Singaporean’s concerns with affordability of medical costs. He said something about how government has already done so by allowing Medisave to be used for more health problems.

Whoopee!

Medisave is a scheme developed by the government to force Singaporeans to save part of their income to pay for their medical costs (good) taking the responsibility off the government (bad). Government then imposed restrictions on how Medisave could be used (bad).

Now they’re saying, okay, we’ll let you pay for more medical issues you have. That way, medical costs are more affordable.

But… aren’t we still paying a higher medical bill?