Friday 13th June 2008
Dear Reader,
We need your help! Read our article on healthcare reform, and then give us your opinions in the healthcare poll. Your voting PIN is at the top of this e-mail. All votes are confidential. In our second article today, we give you the lowdown on the Bauhinia Foundation.
NEW ARTICLES
Healthcare
reform in HK
We respond to the HK Government's healthcare reform proposals, focussing on
financial aspects. We take you through the issues and our recommended solution,
a restructuring of the subsidy to incentivise self-reliance but to cap
everyone's annual fees, leaving the Government to cover individual catastrophe
risk. With our structural budget surplus and trillion-dollar reserves, there is
no need for mandatory insurance or more forced savings, which are just a favour
to the banking and insurance sectors, as the MPF scheme was. (13-Jun-08)
Who is the
Bauhinia Foundation?
We look into the Bauhinia Foundation, a tycoon-funded lobby group with
an increasingly cosy relationship with Government, and the people behind it. BF
refuses to disclose who funds it, or publish its accounts, claiming to be both
private and a tax-exempt "trust of public character" at the same time. Who is
making policy for HK - the Government, or a secretly-funded lobby group?
(13-Jun-08)
RECENTLY ON WEBB-SITE.COM
Justice Flip-flop
In a bizarre case, a judge first issued a ruling against an appeal, and
then retracted it and allowed the appeal hours later, after being reminded that
his judgement did not tally with statements made in the hearing 9 months
earlier. The first judgement does not appear online - until now, that is.
Webb-site.com is publishing it in the
interests of transparency. (7-Jun-08)
ICEA deja vu
We look at the latest action by the SFC against ICEA, the second in
three years, and also at the complicated structure of state-controlled banking
giant ICBC in Hong Kong. (6-Jun-08)
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David M Webb
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