Anwar Ibrahim suggests removing health care subsidies from the rich to impose higher charges on them in public health care facilities. The PM also wants sugar subsidies scrapped to reduce diabetes cases, saying the savings can fund diabetes treatment.
Although this sounds good in terms of health and social justice, the main driver for policy making for our government still is lack of income, fear of losing and elites’ capture of policymaking process. Thus, the tension between wanting to spend more to capture votes vs having less fund.
As long as politics remain competitive as now, and the system allows for those who won (i.e. government) to use levers of power to try to remain in power, we will not get true reforms that our country needs. All hypes about doing the right things will remain forgotten in trying to win the votes