Kuala Lampur, July 18 -- Speaking at a public forum in Kuala Lumpur in 2023, a senior officer from Ministry of Health's (MOH) planning division denigrated the UK National Health Service as a poor example to emulate given its current sad state.

Unfortunately, he seemed unaware of how the NHS had been ravaged in the preceding decades by both Tory as well as Labour governments, and what lessons MOH could draw from that decline (given the shared legacy of our Bevan-Beveridge institutional architectures).

Just as we shouldn't unduly blame NHS for the service failures emanating from its subjection to an "internal market" regime, we shouldn't blame MOH for its desperate resort to RakanKKM to monetise its (contested) inpatient spare capacity fo...