The People’s Health Forum, a group comprising several NGOs and individuals committed to providing healthcare as part of human rights, said a social health insurance scheme will incur extra costs to the healthcare system.
Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) chairman Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj, who is a convener for the group, said while social health insurance is considered to be a better option than the current system that relies on private health insurance, it will require new bureaucracies.
He said social health insurance functions like a law whereby everyone is required to pay and the amount one pays is community-rated and not based on the individual’s health risk.
“These new bureaucracies incur a significant increase in administrative costs and workforce resources,” he said at the launch of the forum’s Blueprint on Health Reform in Malaysia.
PSM is one of the groups represented in the People’s Health Forum.
Jeyakumar said collecting funds through the system can prove to be difficult as only 6.5 million people are contributing to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and they are from the formal sector.
“Passing the law is one thing but how do we collect the money from small businessmen, farmers and those in the gig sector?” he asked.
In June, health minister Khairy Jamaluddin proposed introducing social health insurance and co-payments with full subsidies or waivers for low-income groups.
However, Khairy stressed that he needed to be “realistic”, saying that increasing allocations for the health ministry from the federal government budget had its “limits and constraints”.
On a separate note, senior lecturer at Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine & Health Sciences Dr Sharuna Verghis pointed out that health reforms in Malaysia should provide universal healthcare access for migrant workers and non-citizens.
“They should be entitled to the same medical benefits as Malaysians in public healthcare, that is to be subject to the local fee rate at the point of payment,” she said.
She also said the policy of reporting undocumented migrants seeking care at public clinics and hospitals should be removed as it represents a significant barrier to the healthcare process.
The Blueprint had also proposed “that the government table a bill to delink immigration law enforcement actions from the healthcare system in the long term”.