In case you have not heard about 1Care social health insurance (another 1Malaysia “initiative”) yet, here is a summary of what we all will be facing if the proposal is passed as law in Parliament soon. This definitely affects your wealth, but most importantly, it also impacts the well-being of your spouse, your children, your parents and everyone you care about.
In the current health care system, when you seek medical treatment at private clinics/hospitals, you either pay from your own pocket or, if you have medical insurance, your insurance company will pay for your expenses.
For government clinics or hospitals, you pay a small fee only because the expenses are paid using taxpayers’ (our) money.
1Care is going to change all this. It would be a major revamp whereby the government wants you to believe that 1Care will make health care cheaper and better for citizens from all walks of life. All private clinics and hospitals need to join this sytem for standardization. A noble intention, yes, but wait until you read about some of the salient points regarding its proposed implementation below.
- You pay a mandatory 10 percent deduction of your monthly gross salary to contribute to National Health Care Financing Authority (NHFA).
- You cannot opt out. Your employer will face legal action if they do not participate.
- You cannot choose your doctor to seek free medical treatment. 1Care system will assign one for you. If you want to consult other medical practitioner, you need to pay your own.
- You only have the basic health care services for free. How “basic” is anyone’s guess for now. If your medical treatment is not under the “basic package”, you need to pay your own.
- NHFA will pay RM 60 to the assigned doctor whom you seek medical treatment from. This only covers consultation fees and injection, if needed. Patients will be charged current private health care rates instead of public health care rates.
- You need to go the the pharmacy for the prescribed medicine. Insurance companies will have major say in the price and the range of this standardised medicine list. It will likely to be the cheapest medicine. This will save cost for 1Care and maximise profit for the insurance companies. If you don’t like the medicine prescribed, you need to pay for your own medicine.
- Like all medical insurance, there is a limitation on the number of visits to your assigned doctor – 6 visits per year. Exceeding this limit means you need to pay on your own. Find out more options for medical insurance here, if you need to pay your own.
- Your assigned doctor decides which specialist you can go to. If you wish to see the specialist or go to a hospital of your choice, you need to pay on your own.
- There is NO refund on your 10 percent monthly deduction even if you do not seek any medical treatment at all!
My financial thoughts
One thing is certain, our health care quality will deteriorate under such proposed implementation, at a less affordable cost.
Is it fair for all age groups to pay a flat rate of 10 percent of one’s income? This contradicts with the very core concept of mortality & morbidity rate in insurance.
How about unemployed people? Are they eligible? If no, how can they seek medical treatment? If yes, does that mean the employed is essentially paying the health care expenses for the unemployed?
Details are vague, and there are many more questions yet to be answered.
Share your thoughts on this.
Source:
Malaysia Chronicle: 1Care rip-off
LCF is an engineer with keen interest in financial planning and investing. He maintains a personal finance blog at http://www.howtofinancemoney.com/ which aims to spread financial literacy to the masses through practical and simplified how-to money tips.
16 replies to "1Care National Healthcare proposal: How would it benefit Malaysian citizens?"
you know how hard of our life.
house and car loan make we live hard.
no help from gov.
Still have to pay children fees…
10% of salary can pay for save for our whole family half month meal.
if implement, and if no choice, I hang up mysel better. No need be hungry die.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison. The plan robs the rich to pay the poor, another “tongkat” for the needy as well as the lazy.
Force sale or Hard sale, but hard life to working class. Will police officer charge me, if I use “roberry” word ?
I think there should be an option for those with sufficient medical insurance coverage to be able to opt out of this scheme.
As usual, there’s always the good things ($$$) for those who proposed this and the rakyat will always be on the losing end of this. The poor will get poorer, the average will get poorer and the rich don’t really care.
Why don’t they just take all our salaries/commissions/dividends every month and tell us they’re distributing free food and groceries via some 1-scheme or other and limit the amount we are allowed to take to a maximum for 3 pax in the family per week.
All, I don’t agree with proposed system for many reasons
i) Its a no-choice, mandatory participation system which is not democratic.
ii) If I have medical and health insurance which I am paying monthly which gives me choice of doctors or hospitals, I still need to contribute to this system which dont give me choices..
iii) If I or my family keep myself healthy through discipline and healthy living and hardly visits the doctor any year, why should I contribute to paying for someone who is negligent of their own health ? Looks like a selfish reason , but this type of system does not promote living healthily
iv) It might be supported if it was not for the present government whose every new scheme seems to garner more mistrust and sceptism from the public. Just look at all the SPVs who are created especially to manages the funds from this type of schemes.
v) The implementation has not been thought off thoroughly if what is proposed is truth. Some of these are already brought up by the feedback provided by other readers
1Care, as well as other products that carry the ‘1’ tag mark is a scam by the BN and their cronies in ripping off the public to enrich themselves. 1Care, is not merely about dealing with the speculated 10% tax deduction that will go into a national medicare pool. The problems with 1Care are deeper and darker than just paying good money for sub-par service and medication.
The real goal of 1Care is to generate the best ‘value for money’ situation for the government, not the people.
Dr Rozita Halina Hussein, the Health Ministry deputy director for the National Health Financing unit said that 1 Care would have to be made mandatory as 1Care can only work if it is made mandatory for everyone. Otherwise, no one would sign up. As 1Care forces citizens to subscribe to what the government wants, and since the government maintains full controls, Malaysians can be sure Umno-BN and its friends will benefit.
By the way, Dr Rozita Halina Hussein is the sister to the Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein Onn and also the cousin to the Prime Minister Najib Razak. So we can forget any notion that 1Care will be scrapped. It will be implemented at all costs. This is our 1Malaysia’s ‘family packages’ for you.
As the public cannot choose where to go for medical treatment under 1Care, they could end with the ‘cheapest’ service and medicines available, all in the name of national cost-savings!
As the Malaysian Health Ministry will determine the services and the GPs that citizens will see under 1Care, how sure are we that no form of racial and religious bias will be at play when a doctor sees an assigned patient?
Proper health care for the citizens is a right, not a privilege, and as such the Najib administration must bear in mind that health care is a mandatory provision for all Malaysian citizen.
I am very sure the majority of the Malaysian population are of the opinion that, overall, the current health care system has been running well for 50 over years, except for some minor hiccups, here and there due to poor management by the health ministry officials as well as some leakages of “scarce resources”. So why the need to reinvent the wheel now by introducing the 1Care? Could there be some ulterior motives on the part of the Umno-BN? We also wonder why the Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai, caught red-handed for lying to the people about the police tear-gassing Tung Shin hospital during the Bersih march, has chosen to support the 1Care initiative.
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1Care MUST NOT be introduced in Malaysia and if the Umno-Bn government does not listens to the citizens, then everyone should all reject the Umno-Bn parties in the coming 13th General Election.
Wow! The present government is copying every Obama-style administration system!
Yes, they can! (“,)
This is just another scheme to squeeze money out of the working class for the BN-class to benefit. What better way than to make everything mandatory (forced)? First they take your pension money from EPF and now they’ll squeeze you for 1Care. If you do your maths, at the end of the day, you pay 10% for EPF, 20-30% in taxes and another 10% in 1Care. What do you take home? 50% of your salary? It’s a big scam, period. As it is even with medical insurance, the hospital slaps you with a HUGE bill, which according to my insurance agent, is another big scam (overcharging) and is causing the premiums to skyrocket. Now there’s 1Care to take over the scam. Does the government think the people are blind and stupid? Judging from the past and what is currently still going on, that’s an astounding YES. The rakyat are stupid.
Yes, we’ve been really stupid, but we can’t stay stupid forever.
I feel the government should enforce or at least encourage everyone to buy medical insurance abd if possible subsidise it so that everybody will buy medical insurance to reduce the governments medical expenses. They also must check the prices of the medical bills charged by private hospital which are sometimes exorbident too just because they are charging insurance company. This is a problem because it finishes up the yearly limit and lifetime limit of the card holder.
Answer is no. 10% of the salary. “Siau”.
If my salary is RM2000, which mean i have to pay RM200 for this plan.
RM200 * 12 = RM2,400.
If only i only visit doctor 6 times per year, is that cost so much?
Hi all,
First of all, i think this idea is not solid enough.. because for me, it such a waste for the employees because we need to pay 10% of our gross salary for the thing that we seldom get involved with. I mean that we not going to fall sick for every month and i think it is enough for us to use the insurance cover that provided by the company itself.
For me, individually, i dont think this is a good idea and this would burden more on the citizen because if your salary is RM1500, then 10% out of it is RM150, which is for me as a employee, that is a big amount if we times it by 12 ( a year) it will become about Rm1800 which i can use to pay my utilities.
Maybe the government should concentrate more on the Klinik 1 Malaysia which i see that this clinic is much better idea compare to this 1 Care program. Government should increase the number of the Klinik 1 Malaysia through out all Malaysia. i think this could be better.
Thanks.
Eidil
Damn! If this is true then it will be daylight robbery. Might as well purchase an Insurance policy. Don’t think the Govt is that DAFT that they will propose such plan. However give these blokes the benefit of doubt. We are often judgmental without knowing full details. Hear them out then criticize. Not the otherway round.
Yes, its true that we hear them out first. However, I am a bit apprehensive given that most of the time the powers at hand just shoved it down our throats. Once they face tremendous oposition, then all they do is to shelve it until the opportune time. This scheme was deliberated much much earlier but was shelved until now (if my memory serves me well).
Our Health Minister just issued a statement, slamming those manipulating ongoing 1Care healthcare reform discussions
The news:
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/2/14/nation/20120214163835&sec=nation
According to Liow, the proposed 10 percent contributions include three parties – the Government, employers and employees. It is NOT totally from employees alone.
Rgds
LCF
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