Materia Medica Malaysiana

Daily Express, Sabah, Malaysia -- News Headlines: "Kuala Lumpur: Bank Negara Malaysia Governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz said that private medical and health insurance have an important role in complementing and supplementing the national healthcare system.
“Indeed, more and more Malaysians are turning to the insurance and takaful industries for insurance protection to finance their healthcare requirements,” she said in her opening remarks at a seminar on Medical and Health Insurance for Insurers and Takaful Operators, here Tuesday.
She said that this has led to substantial expansion in medical and health insurance business in the last five years, with premiums increasing at an average annual rate of 16 per cent to nearly RM1 billion in 2002.
Medical and health insurance currently accounts for more than five per cent of total premiums in the insurance industry.
“Going forward, we can expect more Malaysians to allocate an increasingly larger proportion of their income for healthcare provisions,” Dr Zeti said. She said that although Malaysia has a relatively young population, demographic changes point to an expanding ageing population with improvement in living standards and advances in medical science and healthcare facilities.
At the same time, any changes in the extended family structure would increase pressures on individual responsibility for medical care, she added. “These developments pose significant social policy challenges for the national healthcare system to ensure access to fundamental medical facilities for all Malaysians in the most efficient and cost effective manner,” Dr Zeti said.
She said that in this regard, private healthcare financing will become increasingly important in complementing and supplementing the healthcare facilities in the public sector.
The Governor said that the public sector healthcare financing has already been on an upward trend in recent years.

She said that the Government healthcare expenditure is expected to approach RM9 billion by 2004 from about RM2.8 billion in 1995 while healthcare expenditure as a proportion of the overall Government budget is projected to increase to eight per cent from five per cent over the same period. - Bernama