Dr M: Public contribution to healthcare needed due to rising costs

Malaysian Insider: SERDANG, Feb 15 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad pointed to the rising cost of healthcare as a defence for Putrajaya’s new controversial contribution-based “1 Care” proposal.
The former prime minister did not delve deeply into the matter, stating only that government could no longer shoulder the country’s healthcare burden on its own.
“Our (current) system is non-contributory. It was started by the British... but at the time, the cost of medicine was only one sen.
“But today, a capsule could cost as much as RM10... if you take four capsules a day for five days, the government may not be able to support that.
“So maybe there is a case for some contribution towards healthcare,” he told reporters after a function at the Perdana University here.
“It is very costly now... one operation could cost you RM100,000... how can the government support this?” Dr Mahathir (picture) added.
Putrajaya’s “1 Care” proposal has come under fire from industry practitioners and consumer associations who claim the system would force all wage-earners to contribute some 10 per cent of their income to a government-run insurance scheme.
Under the scheme, however, critics say the public would only receive limited benefits and would still be forced to fork out hefty sums for basic healthcare.
According to one online news report: “1 Care aims to place private medicine under government control, a step further than former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s sweeping health privatisation upheavals in the 1980s that delivered a hefty windfall to Umno’s partners, including Dr Mahathir’s son Mokhzani.”
During a recent forum on 1 Care by the Citizens’ Health Care (CHC), a representative Dr T Jayabalan said that the new healthcare plan would also result in a new bill, called the Pharmaceutical Bill to be passed in Parliament later this year.
The bill, according to him would see a separation between “dispersing and prescribing” medicine where doctors would generally only be allowed to prescribe medicine while pharmacists would be given full responsibility in dispersing medicine.
“In emergency cases, doctors would be allowed to give medication but a cap portion,” he said.
When asked by reporters where he obtained his information from, Jayabalan said doctors who were part of the working committee groups on 1 Care had informed him. He also admitted he was not part of the working committee.
Despite widespread criticism, the Health Ministry has repeatedly stated that 1 Care is merely an “upgrade” of Malaysia’s current two-pronged healthcare system, and that discussion was “premature” as nothing had been set in stone.