KUALA LUMPUR, March 28 — Some Malaysians are forced to take loans to pay their health insurance premiums, according to a consumers’ group that warned how Malaysia may end up like the United States.
In an interview with radio station BFM’s Health & Living presenter Tee Shiao Eek, Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca) vice president and legal advisor Indrani Thuraisingham said skyrocketing medical insurance premiums have forced others to drop their policies.
“Second, they’re trying to take private loans to pay [for their premiums] and that’s a little bit scary because if you look at what is happening in the US now, people are becoming bankrupt because of medical costs. So you have this thing called medical bankruptcy and we may be [heading] towards that,” Indrani told BFM in a podcast aired yesterday.
According to Indrani, Malaysians feel that health insurance is crucial for immediate access to private health care, as public health care facilities’ have long waiting times while the wards in government hospitals are overcrowded.
“So they’re borrowing or taking loans to pay off [their premiums].”
Public health activist Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar wrote on Facebook recently that a retiree from the Ministry of Health (MOH), who was diagnosed with kidney and heart problems and anaemia a few months ago, died at the age of 68 last March 18.
She had a hip fracture and was scheduled for surgery a whopping two years ago at a government hospital, but the operation was delayed multiple times, leading to her only receiving symptomatic treatment. “The health system failed them.”
Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy chief executive Azrul Mohd Khalib, who was at the same interview with Indrani, told BFM that senior citizens aged 60 years and older are also dropping their medical insurance policies, due to an unaffordable hike in premiums, and shifting to the public health care system.
Similarly, younger adults with families are cancelling their own unaffordable health insurance to prioritise their young children’s medical insurance coverage.
“So we have these kind of decisions that are currently being made for an upper middle income country – where we are supposedly asking the middle class to take responsibility to take charge of their own health care to make use of health care facilities that we have, especially in the private [sector], because we’re told that if you can afford it, then avail yourself to private health care,” Azrul said.
“Suddenly we’re faced with this decision where they’re now saying they can’t do it. Think about it, Shiao Eek, 70 per cent of the population currently access public health care and 30 per cent access private.
“We can’t afford even a 1 per cent shift from private to public because the public health care system right now is overwhelmed already with the existing burden that’s placed upon it.”
Both Fomca and the Galen Centre called for the formation of an independent oversight body to regulate medical insurance and private health care charges in the interest of consumer protection.
Indrani pointed out that although Malaysia has a Financial Services Ombudsman, this office is funded by the industry, hence it’s a conflict of interest.
“If you look at the Financial Services Ombudsman annual reports, you will see that most of the cases are not in favour of consumers. Consumers are actually not having trust or confidence that their complaints are being addressed. So where do they go?
“Many of them end up telling us, ‘we went to Bank Negara, but Bank Negara says, go back to the Financial Services Ombudsman’.”
Azrul called for an independent commission, along with a regulatory framework, to focus on consumer protection in regulating health insurance and private health care costs, noting that 70 per cent of a private hospital’s bill is unregulated. Only doctors’ fees are regulated under the Private Healthcare Facilities and Services Act 1998.
Drug prices are also unregulated, but Azrul said medicines form only a small portion of the hospital bill.
“The issue right now is, whose job is it? We need a regulatory framework that looks at those two issues,” he said.
Azrul pointed out that Bank Negara only regulates the financial aspects of the insurance industry, but not consumer protection.
“It’s unfair to expect Bank Negara to do that. It’s also unfair to expect the Ministry of Health to do that because there’s no legislation. So today, we have a vacuum which needs to be filled with a new commission or a regulatory framework to ensure that the consumer protection aspects of medical health inflation is able to be taken care of.”
