Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) president Dr Koh Kar Chai said one issue raging now on social media was the astronomical bill a Category 5 Covid-19 patient might incur at a private hospital, adding that amounts quoted had been in the range of a few hundred thousand ringgit.

Koh said most people were paying out of their own pockets or relied on meagre health insurance policies and would suffer a major blow if they suffered a catastrophic health event.

He said many were hardly surviving the economic disaster and recovering from a major illness, while being too sick to raise money for the bill would be disastrous.

He said there were many rare and novel diseases that need specialised medication on a long-term basis which could also break the bank.

“Some users of public healthcare services may not realise it but the cost is high in the public sector, too. We don’t see this because public healthcare is heavily subsidised by the government,” he said in a statement.

However, Koh noted that there was a long wait for treatment in the public health system and some might not survive the wait.

“We need to wake up now to the reality that reform of our healthcare system is needed immediately. We need to fix it before more fall by the wayside because they cannot obtain much-needed healthcare,” he said.

“Many of these treatments may not be covered by medical insurance schemes, unless a person is fortunate enough to have the means to purchase a high-cost insurance scheme which is almost unlimited.”

He believed that these reforms could be rolled out if both sides of the political divide realise that the time for action is now.