When I read an article about the medical crisis in Japan, due to the coronavirus, I was surprised that medical systems had been established with more private clinics and hospitals since the late Nineteenth Century.
Japan Medical Association has been criticised for refusing to take COVID patients, by insisting that private clinics and hospitals would not survive because of huge costs. The organisation has been established for research purposes and its members are doctors who own and operate private clinics and hospitals.
Criticism has been made because Japanese citizens believe that the medical organisation only focuses on profits, rights and power for member doctors, rather than helping the community save the pandemic. People in Japan want the JMA to look after more and more COVID patients in order to overcome the crisis. And instead the President of JMA demands the Government to declare the state of emergency to save their member doctors from risks to get infected, and so that they will be more profitable.
Therefore, doctors and nurses at state hospitals are overloaded in looking after coronavirus patients under the pressure. Their mental health conditions are at risk, I sense.
Under the Medical Act in Japan, central and local Governments cannot order private hospitals to accept patients. The private sectors are given the right to take patients or not. And on the other hand, state hospitals are subjects to obey the Governments’ orders.
From my point of view, private hospitals should take patients to overcome the worldwide pandemic. But handing medical operations to private sectors is another problem, I think, because medical treatments are linked with lifelines, therefore should be categorised as infrastructure rather than service.
Let’s move onto transport. The industry has been owned and operated by state organisations in the past. But they were expected to be more profitable in the 1980s, many transport operators have been privatised all over the world. They went from infrastructures to services. Even transport privatisation happens in big cities.
Former Victoria’s Premier Jeff Kennett privatised many state sectors including Melbourne’s buses, trams and trains in the late 1990s. The current train service operator Metro has caused big incidents and some Melburians are frustrated with their poor services.
Osaka’s subway and bus services were privatised in 2018, thanks to former Mayor of Toru Hashimoto who focused on cutting the budget of Osaka City. Two years before, its west neighbouring city of Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture privatised their bus services.
Osaka Metro’s subway services are the same as when owned and operated by the city council, but I am not sure about how services are changed for Osaka City Bus and former Amagasaki City Bus. However numbers of bus services in Sapporo have been reduced (the biggest city in Hokkaido privatised its bus services in early 2000s year by year).
Services linking to lifelines should be reasonable and not be considered as profitable. Which is more important, our life or money? Privatisation affects our life somehow (no matter the amount). Unreasonable privatisation should be avoided, as many Victorians are against the privatisation (they see negatives of privatisation from its failure and believe Mr Kennett ruined the state).
