CodeBlue has decided to publish a 200-page report containing the full anonymised responses in our nationwide survey among 855 private specialists on health insurance problems.
The names of insurers and takaful operators (ITOs), third-party administrators (TPAs), and corporate clients cited by several respondents have been redacted in our report.
Otherwise, responses remain unedited, without spelling/grammatical corrections or explanations of medical jargon or acronyms.
When the CodeBlue team embarked on this project, we thought that we’d only be able to get 200 respondents at the most, as specialist doctors are typically reticent.
Participation in our survey from more than 850 specialists practising in private hospitals – with representation across every major specialty in the country – shows the depth of clinicians’ frustration and exasperation with health insurance.
Our poll wasn’t short either; it had 20 questions, including several open-ended ones. But the majority of respondents took the time to elaborate on how insurers interfered with their practice of medicine, threatening patient safety and quality of care in many cases.
Never before have interactions between doctor and insurer been made known publicly – until the publication of our survey.
By and large, anecdotal evidence shows that health insurance tactics of “Deny, Delay, Revoke” are increasingly pervasive in Malaysia and starting to mirror American health care, amid growing pressure on the insurance industry in our country post-Covid.
But unlike the United States, Malaysia has little regulation of health insurance and institutional payers of health care like TPAs.
CodeBlue has requested comment from the Life Insurance Association of Malaysia (LIAM), the General Insurance Association of Malaysia (PIAM), and the Malaysian Takaful Association (MTA), as well as the Ministry of Health and Bank Negara Malaysia on our survey findings.
We hope that this report will be of use to the medical fraternity, insurance industry, and policymakers and legislators to reform health insurance in the best interest of patients.
For short reading, below are four articles in our series on the survey, plus a CodeBlue editorial:
- Poll: Nearly All Specialists Perceive Insurer Interference With Clinical Decisions
- ‘Deny, Delay, Revoke’: Specialists Reveal Health Insurance Underbelly In Malaysia
- Insurance Denies Various Drug Claims In Malaysia, Including Expensive Innovators, Cheap Generics
- ‘Is The Patient Pregnant?’ (Patient’s A Man): Irrelevant Questions Insurers Ask Doctors
- CodeBlue’s View: Health Insurance Horrors Demolish Deceptive Fantasy Of Protection
Our 200-page report can be downloaded by filling in the form below, after which the PDF will be automatically downloaded.
Boo Su-Lyn
Co-founder and editor-in-chief of CodeBlue
