Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

In Tabitha Wang’s Budget Tai Tai column in Today 25th July 2008, she touched on a seemingly unsurprising topic – that rooms in Singapore are expensive. So what’s new? All our foreign visitors know that. That’s why Singapore is only a place for “Transit” and you don’t need a whole week to see Sentosa, the zoo, Chinatown, Little India etc. Apart from the expats, not many tourists would stay around for months and then elope with our girls to further lower our birth rates

However, Madam Wang added a new perspective which may serve as an eye-opener for those of us who are still seriously thinking that Singapore is going to be a medical hub of the region. A couple of Australians contemplating dental treatment in Singapore have emailed me to discuss the cost of treatment which sounded very attractive to them. But the moment they factored in the accommodation costs – for procedures that require multiple stages, the relatively low treatment costs are no longer attractive. The total bill is not very different from that in Australia.

Let’s face it. Within the developed world, medical (and dental) fees in Singapore are considered low. Our hotels are expensive, but naturally, few locals would complain about that. Strangely, we see a lot of effort being put into making sure that doctors don’t overcharge, but very little is done to make sure that medical and other long-staying tourists would have more sensible options than staying in our hotels.

In an unrelated article, Ansley Ng talks about being single, walking into a video rental store … which makes me sympathise with him. I used to be so busy doing a lot of meaningful but unprofitable things when I was single that I’m far more likely to watch TV (make that Transformers or Tom & Jerry) now that I’m married with kids. This guy probably doesn’t know how much he can do with his life before he gets married. I figured that perhaps I could introduce him to some happening club or society, some excellent backpacking destinations and so on.

When Mr Ng mentions “so it would be interesting to see what measures the Government (capital G) unveils next month to help singles-networking processes along …” I had to pronounce him hopeless. Apart from the uncles and aunties, even our young, educated people are not taking charge of their own lives anymore. So sad.