Materia Medica Malaysiana

Income will decide the amount you pay

The National Health Financing Scheme is neither a privatised nor an insurance scheme.
It is a scheme where those who can afford will have to pay a certain amount based on their annual household income.
Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said the existing healthcare treatment and hospitalisation for the civil servants, the elderly, the poor and the unemployed would still continue with the Government subsi- dising 98 per cent of the cost of drugs every year.
"The scheme is to reduce the Government's burden of having to spend RM800 million annually as subsidy on drugs," he said after opening a two-day national conference and exhibition at Universiti Malaya.
The conference is on "Biomedical Informatics: Applications in Teaching, Training, Research and Development - Convergence of Informatics and its Development Trends".
Dr Chua said the money saved through the scheme could be utilised for upgrading the existing facilities in government hospitals and also to provide quality healthcare service for the people.
The Economic Planning Unit in the Prime Minister's Department will appoint a consultant to fine-tune the mechanism, including coming up with the rates to be charged depending on the annual household income.
Dr Chua said studies showed that 35 per cent of the population's annual household income was less than RM1,500.
He added the consultant's report would indicate the minimum and maximum amount to be charged based on each family's annual household income .
"The general principles of the scheme have already been agreed upon. Now we have to wait for the consultant's report before implementing the scheme."
Dr Chua said Malaysia had seen the modules used by countries such as Germany, Taiwan, China and Singapore but those cannot be used fully as Malaysia needed its own module based on its development and people's affordability.
The Government subsidy for drugs in 1996 was RM280 million and it rose to RM800 million last year.
Dr Chua said the scheme was needed as the Government could not continue to cover the rising cost of health.
The budget for the Health Ministry has risen from RM1 billion or 3.6 per cent of the national Budget in 1983 to RM7.6 billion or 7.1 per cent of the Budget in 2003.
At the same time, the total collection from hospitals and clinics only equalled 2.2 per cent of the ministry's operating budget in 2003.