Scrap 1Care plan, urge groups

Star: PETALING JAYA: The Health Ministry should scrap plans to change the entire healthcare system under the 1Care for 1Malaysia plan, said medical experts and concerned citizen groups.
Also, it is better for Malaysia to improve the current healthcare system instead of shaping the 1Care for 1Malaysia plan after foreign models.
Federation of Private Medical Practitioners Associations Malaysia president Dr Steven Chow said the Malaysian healthcare system had achieved remarkable results despite our relatively low healthcare expenditure.
“Why do we want to totally transform a system that is already working relatively well, with something entirely new that might not suit us at all?” Dr Chow asked at a press briefing recently.
Citing data from international organisations, Dr Chow said that Malaysia’s healthcare system was comparable to countries like the US, Britain and Singapore even though our healthcare spending was lower in GDP terms.
He said the country would only need to address some of the shortcomings of the current system to improve it, such as problem of wastage and under-productivity in the public sector.

Dr T. Jayabalan, the main coordinator of the Citizens’ Healthcare Coalition, said the ministry should talk to local experts, instead of foreign ones, on the best way to improve healthcare.
Voices of dissent against the proposed 1Care for 1Malaysia healthcare reforms have been mounting since members of the Citizens Healthcare Coalition posted “supposed details” of the plan.
These details include the claim that households will have to fork out 10% of their monthly income to fund a Social Health Insu- rance that will be used to finance the new system.
Although the Health Ministry had earlier clarified that the plan was still in its conceptual stage, some parties have claimed that parts of the plan are already being imple-mented.