I read with amusement the article Businessmen using docs as proxies to open clinics which appeared in the mainstream media stating that only doctors are allowed to open clinics. Doesn't the Ministry of Health have better things to do? Clearly this does not bear logic.

Large private hospitals in this country with all their various specialist clinics are owned by corporations such as KPJ, which is publicly-listed. The others like Sime Darby, Tabung Haji, Pantai Hospitals, Sunway, Gleneagles, are all owned by businessmen. They employ or contract out services to a large number of doctors.

In fact, it is to the advantage of doctors that businessmen are partners or owners in these ventures as it would bring in much-needed investment capital and management expertise to upgrade services and also frees the doctor to focus on what he knows best doctoring, and leave matters pertaining to customer service, marketing, accounts, IT, billing, credit control and banking to people who are well-versed and trained in these areas.

If this rationale was applied to other industries, then buses must be owned by bus drivers or conductors, engineering companies be owned only by engineers, Genting should not own a power plant as they are only experts in gambling and Manchester United can only be owned by Bobby Charlton or Ryan Giggs and not the Glazer brothers.

The statement by the MOH official in the above report further states that businessmen operating medical clinics contravene the Private Healthcare Facilities and Services Act 1998 (PHFSA). This would mean then that the Act would directly contradict established Malaysian business rules and company regulations lending further credence that the PHFSA was a cut-and-paste legislation engineered by a few incompetent MOH officials and passed through an ignorant parliament oblivious to the existing laws of this country.

While Singapore is dismantling many of its anti-business regulations causing the Singapore Medical Association to withdraw guidelines on medical fees for fear of contravening the Competition Act, our MOH officials are in the reverse gear and seem completely unaware that the world is hurtling inexorably towards globalisation. Cooking up regulations so that you can hide under the shell of protectionism will only mean we will be left behind and may suffer a fate worse then Proton.

There are far greater issues this country's healthcare system is facing and they are serious. The absence of discussion in the mainstream media is so glaring that one has to assume that this probably has more to do with protecting political owners and masters rather then sticking to the thin narrow line of professional journalism.

Ambulances that don't have petrol, there is a high number of dengue deaths, hospitals are uncompleted and crumbling and the question of patients having delayed access to heart treatment causing many of them to die on the waiting list are issues that require focused attention.

Unless the MOH is rudderless, which it currently appears to be, this is clearly no time to be petty unless of course the MOH is using issues of this nature to deflect recent criticisms of its poor services in which case it should perhaps put its house in order before trying to clean up others.