Pretend for a second that you didn’t know any better. Imagine reading the headline: 'เปิดผลดำเนินการ ‘รพ.สต.’ 81 แห่ง รับงบ “เบิกจ่ายตรงสิทธิข้าราชการ” หวังลดแออัด รพ.ใหญ่.' And now, feel the smug satisfaction, the self-congratulation radiating from policymakers—a patch-up job, sold as a revolution. Surely, if we let small community hospitals (รพ.สต.) take in direct budget allocations for civil servants, the overcrowded nightmares of major hospitals will magically disappear. Thailand, pat yourself on the back. Or should you?

Let’s drop the charade. This is not innovation. This is institutional gaslighting—a system exhausted, propped up by token gestures to distract from chronic rot. For decades, our society has worshipped at the altar of 'big hospital' medicine: shiny towers, overworked doctors, and backbreaking queues, all blamed on 'demand.' The real disease, though, is cowardice: a refusal to fix root causes—corruption, underfunding, and a culture of bureaucratic favoritism that has left community health to wither. Now, slapping 81 รพ.สต. with a civil servant budget is hailed as a breakthrough. That's like giving a leaky rowboat a fresh coat of paint and hoping it sails.

You want to talk hypocrisy? Community hospitals have been the neglected stepchildren of Thai health policy. Stripped of resources, ignored by politicians obsessed with prestige projects, forgotten by urban elites who would rather whine about wait times than invest in systems that benefit the countryside—who, exactly, do you think these 81 outposts are supposed to serve? Tossing civil servant entitlements their way is less about compassion, more about preserving privilege: make it less miserable for state officials, never mind the farmers, the grandmothers, the children with no VIP pass. The healthcare system is built on unequal tiers, and every stopgap like this entrenches the rot. Imagine thinking you’ve solved a flood by digging a few puddles inland.

Let’s tell the ugly truth. Unless we stop pretending piecemeal policies are progress, nothing changes. The รพ.สต. don’t need a trickle of privileged direct payments; they need a deluge—resources, respect, and political courage to rebuild public trust. Otherwise, it’s bread crumbs and optics, a Band-Aid on a gaping wound, while the privileged trade up to nicer waiting rooms and the rest of the country simply waits to die.

So, are you ready to celebrate another empty announcement, or will you finally admit that our entire approach to healthcare—its funding, its ethics, its priorities—is rotten to its core? Ask yourself: Is comfort for some worth the suffering of the many? If you’re not squirming right now, you’re part of the problem.