LETTER | The insurance and healthcare industries are out of control

LETTER | By now, you would have heard of the financial hardship faced by an increasing number of people who were 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 is that while ordinary people faithfully pay their premiums, insurance giants and private hospitals (many of whom may now have their eyes firmly fixed on the lucrative “medical tourism”) have started to blame each other for the rising cost of health care. 

To make matters worse, Bank Negara Malaysia has also waded into the dispute and blamed “overconsumption”, giving the impression that the guilty are actually 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 their businesses' costs 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 CodeBlue, one prominent hospital group recorded a staggering net profit of RM623 million for the second quarter this year, more than double from a year earlier!

Meanwhile, a well-known insurance company recorded RM1.1 billion in profit after tax for the six months ending June 30, an impressive 33 percent increase from 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, may actually be with the Health Ministry 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 the ministry fixing it?

Thus, to the health minister 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!

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.