Year 25 Day 286
State-sponsored healthcare is a fickle thing. Some dislike it as they see it as governmental overreach and worry about the cost burden, while others support the idea of free healthcare as a right to every sentient in the galaxy.
The Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS) and Ministry of Health (MoH) first experimented with state-sponsored healthcare, providing free surgeries and medicine to citizens. It was a mess. Long wait times plagued the system, and medical errors were reported above the galactic average. The Shadowfeed took an in-depth look into this, revealing the unfortunate truth: the MoH was unprepared to deliver on the promise made by the CIS leadership to its people. As one anonymous medical intern put it, “Sometimes something sounds good when you are looking down on it from an administrative level, but on the ground floor, it is a terrible mess.” The CIS Gossip magazine challenged the MoH, commenting that the CIS faced a critical choice: embrace technological advancements while safeguarding its healthcare system or risk losing the very essence of compassionate medicine.
Since the embarrassment of the last report three months ago, the Ministry of Health has seen significant increases in patient satisfaction scores as it seems to have learned from the mistakes in the first six months of state-sponsored healthcare. Internal review has revealed that surgery delay times and, more importantly, adverse outcomes have improved across the board. A recent survey of random Confederate citizens holds a “mostly favorable” opinion of the MoH.
But could all of this building momentum be threatened by the newly announced expanded regions from within the CIS? With both the Foless and Boeus sectors declaring their intention to join the separatist movement, this will add an additional 2.5 billion citizens that will depend on the MoH. With the addition of responsibility falling on the shoulders of the MoH, some wonder how the ministry will compensate.
When asked about how the MoH plans to handle this increase in patient volumes, Minister Pat Kil’astra responded with the following:
Our mission here at the Ministry of Health is to offer Troika Healthcare to more sentients in the galaxy. The expansion of our operations in these sectors is a blessing for their sentients, as we at MoH bring them quality medical services and products. With the rapidly increasing demand for cybernetic operations in the past months, we have taken measures to reduce the workload for our surgeons. We at MoH pride ourselves in the quality of our work. To ensure continued satisfaction with the sentients in our care, we have contracted Cybot Galactica for the production of our top-of-the-line droids. Since these are not yet ready to deploy, our partners over at Scrapper Guild have happily loaned us their best droids.
While this response sounds valid, some in the MoH have verbalized concerns that it will not be enough. Does the MoH need to hire more trainees, hire more droids, or even expand resident duty hours? Maybe the right approach could be to relax medical licensing requirements needed for a surgical trainee to be fully licensed? While these steps will help increase access to care, many worry these steps could lead to another jump in adverse event rates.
Either way, time will tell if the MoH is truly prepared to expand its services and if they can adjust to the constantly changing demographics as the separatist movement continues to expand. Some anti-fans of “state-sponsored healthcare” claim the program is losing so many credits that the CIS is pulling from other projects to pay for those in need. The CIS Triumvirate refused to comment.