Singapore Health Minister George Yeo has charged opposition Democratic Party Secretary-General Chee Soon Juan and three other SDP members with contempt of parliament by fabricating data on health care costs. If found guilty, they could be imprisoned, fined, barred from parliament or reprimanded.
The complaint, which has been referred to parliament's privileges committee, says they acted "in contempt of parliament by fabricating data and presenting false and/ or untrue documents with intent to deceive" a parliamentary committee on health costs and subsidiaries. Also, it says, they committed perjury, willfully gave false answers, lied and "misconducted themselves." One key issue is an SDP claim that the government's share of total health spending had dropped from 40% to 5% over 20 years. Mr Chee admitted the latter figure should have been 25% and blamed the mistake on a typographical error; Mr Yeo did not accept the explanation.
Analysts say people are concerned about high costs of health care, and that the real issue of how adequate the present financing arrangements are for a rapidly aging population has been overlooked in the controversy. One economist said the government's share of total health expenditure has fallen as it implemented policies to shift more costs to the private sector.
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