The “sweatshop” accusations that some medical reform groups have made against hospital operators are “polarizing the medical field and are not in the best interest of the public,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Ching-chuan (蘇清泉) said yesterday.
Su tabled an extemporaneous motion at Thursday’s meeting of the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee in Taipei, calling on groups demanding that medical institutions reform and improve the working conditions of healthcare workers to “set up a committee in a public hospital and run the hospital according to their ideals to see if it could work out.”
“Run it according to your ideals, your demands and with your suggested salaries and see whether [the hospital] would survive or close down. If the result turns out to be good, [we] would take you as a standard; if not, you should all just shut up,” Su said at the meeting.
In a statement yesterday, Su softened his tone and said his proposal would allow for a “scientific process” to see whether certain reforms could work.
“The government has been proposing measures to make improvements on various medical fronts, but few have received positive feedback... The medical profession used to be collegial, with those in the field supporting each other when facing hardship, but now there are many non-medical people who are causing a stir, and sowing mutual suspicion and conflict,” the statement said.
Quoting tycoon Terry Gou’s (郭台銘) comment that democracy does not fill one’s stomach, Su, who is also the director-general of the Taiwan Medical Association, said those criticizing hospital operators “should themselves get involved in the hands-on operation of a hospital and set an example by implementing their ideals successfully.”
Su’s controversial remarks on the medical profession were not the only comments he made that have drawn fire this week.
At a committee meeting on Monday, while quizzing Environmental Protection Administration Minister Wei Kuo-yen (魏國彥) on the topic of nuclear waste disposal, Su derailed the discussion by calling for an “education budget redistribution.”
The reason he gave for the proposal was that “national university professors and students are the ones who are causing chaos on the streets.”
Su also asked Wei “what sociology departments are studying,” a comment targeting the leaders of the recent student protests who are mainly graduates in sociology.
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