Move for fast access to emergency health care is long overdue
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Re: "Emergency treatment to be open to all", News, March 3.
I am overjoyed to learn of the plan to alleviate the pain
of having to justify one’s ability to pay by only showing an ID card (hopefully eventually including foreign passports) before emergency services at private hospitals can be rendered. The approach of money-first/services-later is humiliating for both patients and doctors.
Having sat at a ER room one night, I could sense that there must have been many lives lost because of monetary concerns when lives could have been saved in time. The eagerness and devotion of ER doctors and nurses are so exemplary but unfortunately currently restrained by this clerical frustration.
I laud this government and especially Public Health Minister Witthaya Buranasiri for having this initiative after being in power for only six months when other governments should have thought of this idea ages ago.
Songdej Praditsmanont
Bangkok
