Honouring of our pioneers should not be based on their healthcare or medical needs, important as these are. But being a nation of pragmatists, our inclination is to honour by rendering help, in the process seeing the old as “needy” or as “sickly”.
It is a little weird to be saying we are honouring the elderly but such “honour” kicks in only when they are sick.
It is like saying to one’s parents, “I am going to honour you. So here is $100 I have put into your bank account – but you can only use it when you are sick.”
That is not honouring them. That is doing one’s duty to one’s parents.
And it is even more puzzling – and amusing – to see some suggesting that we should means-test the elderly for eligibility for the PGP, and that those who do not need these subsidies are encouraged to “opt-out” of it.
Again, it is like saying to the senior folks, “We want to honour you but can you please opt out?”
The problem here seems to be a conflation of two different things – duty and honouring.
Read the full article by Andrew Loh on freshgrad.sg.
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