Rising medical fees ‘killing’ the rakyat?

[superadmin]

BY now you would have heard of the financial hardship faced by an increasing number of people badly affected by the unreasonable spike in medical fees charged by private hospitals.

Inevitably, this has triggered a domino effect prompting the insurance industry to follow suit and raise their medical insurance premium; this of course is sure to force many to cancel their policies and turn to government hospitals.

But, the cruel irony here is that while ordinary people pay up their premiums faithfully, the insurance giants and private hospitals (many of whom may now have their eyes firmly fixed on the lucrative “medical tourism” industry) have now started to blame each other for the rising cost of health care.

To make it worse Bank Negara Malaysia has also waded into the dispute and has blamed “overconsumption”, giving the impression that the guilty ones are the poor, sick people in desperate need of healthcare services.

The truth is that, though both the private hospitals and the insurance industry claim that the costs to their businesses are unsustainable, large businesses in both industries have recorded huge and increased profits this year. How is that?

In fact, according to a recent report by Code Blue (Galen Centre), one prominent hospital group was said to have recorded a staggering net profit of RM 623 million for the second quarter this year, more than double from a year earlier!

Meanwhile, a well-known insurance company was said to have recorded the Group’s profit after tax of about RM1.1 billion for the six months ended June 30, which represents an impressive 33 per cent higher than the same period last year!

That being the case, how can both industries then claim that their businesses may not be “sustainable” because of increasing costs? Is that a blatant lie?

Having said that, the real blame though maybe with the Ministry of Health (MoH) for not regulating the private hospitals (literally allowing them to charge as they like); while BNM may also be guilty of “naively” buying the narrative put forth by the shrewd insurance industry.

The thing is, since it’s now an open secret that the exorbitant fee charged by some private hospitals is the root cause of all the problems, why isn't MoH fixing it?

Thus, to the Minister of Health and BNM the plea from us, the real victims is: please have a heart, it’s the ordinary people who need help - not the multi-billion ringgit private hospitals and insurance businesses!

 * Jeyakumar Joseph is a reader of The Vibes