Materia Medica Malaysiana

Gov't Still Protects The Needy's Welfare, Says Dr Chua

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 18 (Bernama) -- The government has no intention of neglecting the needy's welfare, especially in healthcare services in government hospitals, said Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek.
He said the poor, elderly, civil servants and those who could ill afford their medical fees would still enjoy the current medical benefits in government hospitals and only those who opted for the Full Paying Patients Scheme would be paying as private patients in Hospital Selayang and Hospital Putrajaya.
Dr Chua stressed that the Full Paying Patients Scheme which would be limited to only the two hospitals and the Health Financing Scheme would pave the way for the ministry to ease the government's burden in medical subsidies, currently heavily subsidised at 98 per cent to ensure better facilities and quality healthcare services.
"The Health Financing Scheme is not a privatisation project nor an insurance project. It is a scheme where those who can afford to pay would be charged and those who cannot, their welfare is looked after by the government," he said.
Dr Chua told reporters this after opening the National Conference and Exhibition on "Bio-Medical Informatics: Applications in Teaching, Training, Research and Development - Convergence of Informatics and its Development Trends" at the University of Malaya (UM) here Saturday.
"We have not determined the rate until a study is carried out by our consultants. We have appointed the consultants to look at the rate on how to fine tune the mechanism to suit the Malaysian context," he said, adding that about 35 per cent of families had a household income of less than RM1,500 a month.
He refused to comment further on the implementation of the Health Financing Scheme, saying that the details would only be disclosed after the consultants had studied the various models of similar schemes in other countries like Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, China and Singapore.
Earlier, he witnessed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between UM and Virescent Sdn Bhd on Bio-Medical Informatics related training, research, development and consultancy services.
Meanwhile, Dr Chua lauded the UM for its efforts in developing the Bio-Medical Informatics field, which is a relatively new field but with rich resources in the country.
He said among the future plans under Bio-Medical Informatics would be training of surgeons using simulators, to achieve more precise surgery.