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Malay Mail
02-07-2025
- Health
- Malay Mail
Cancer Diaries: Please don't take my EPF for insurance, learn from other countries instead
JULY 2 — There are things that irk me about Malaysia sometimes but I'm grateful our public healthcare exists. If it hadn't, faced with charges like RM4,000 for a biopsy and nearly RM3,000 for a PET scan, the alternate choice of flying somewhere with snow and dying from exposure on a wintery mountainside would seem far more appealing. Remembering the anguish I felt seeing just how much scans and cancer drugs cost when I started my cancer journey, I do not wish it on anyone else. Public healthcare and the generosity of friends and supporters is literally saving my life so why wouldn't I want that same healthcare available for everyone? Instead some guy in a suit is telling me no, we need to make everyone buy insurance and go to private hospitals instead. I support the notion of a national health insurance scheme but only if it's used for public healthcare. Let's call a cangkul a cangkul: the idea of extracting funds from people's EPF accounts to pay for private insurance benefits not the average Malaysian but private insurers and hospitals. Just look at their financial reporting for the last few years. They make enough money already; we don't need to give them the keys to our retirement funds. My recent dealings with the EPF was a preview of how things will be if this proposal goes through — making health withdrawals will be likely near-impossible because the funds will be frozen to pay your insurance. There are so many things that aren't taken into account with this new idea. It would only work if insurance premiums stayed low and only rose to keep pace with inflation, when in reality the older you get the more costly your premiums become. Insurance companies also usually have an age cutoff not to mention exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Will the rules for medical withdrawals instead follow insurance guidelines — with only specific procedures allowed, generic medications permitted and EPF getting to decide patients' treatment plans? We could learn instead from countries with national health insurance schemes such as China, Japan and South Korea or from Singapore's dedication to preventative healthcare. Singapore starts early by taking a more serious approach to physical education in schools while also encouraging as well as facilitating healthy lifestyle choices among its populace. Meanwhile in Malaysia, we keep hearing of school canteen operators selling slop at expensive prices to our children who are now shorter than ever thanks to an increase in stunting. Why must we constantly shame Malaysians for 'personal choices' when we never make the healthier choice the easier one? I would love for diamonds to be taxed but apparently precious gems and metals will not be included in the SST expansion but dried mushrooms, a very common ingredient in Chinese cookIng, is. Make it make sense. Public healthcare, not private insurance, has been a lifeline for many Malaysians — but proposed changes risk shifting the burden onto individuals and their retirement savings. — Picture by Raymond Manuel I could live with a tweak of tax brackets if it meant that I won't see my oncology nurse be close to tears because there are too many patients and not enough staff to handle them all. Money should never be what decides who lives or who dies. I want more doctors, more nurses, more health interventions for lower income earners and more health resources spread around the country so cancer patients in Pahang and the East Coast don't have to travel all the way to the Klang Valley to be seen. Do not tell me that is not possible or practical when more has been spent on far less important endeavours such as our version of National Service. Perhaps bean counters see the cost of public healthcare as just an expense and not an investment. What do I see? I see women far older than me, frail-looking and tiny, resolutely showing up to their appointments. I watched a bow-legged man walk hand-in-hand with his wife as she hobbled along with a cane along a hospital corridor. On Threads I read the stories of a woman with Stage 4 cancer resolutely trying to live for her children despite the money running out for her drugs, who comes in for treatment on the same days that I do. (You can donate to her here) At the hospital I see people who want to live or at the very least, are doing their best not to die. They deserve better than a system that considers withholding treatment for lack of payment a cost-savings. * This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Embattled GP reveals the biggest losers of Albo's Medicare overhaul
Labor's plans to reform chronic health funding will cripple community medical practices and put Australia's most vulnerable at risk, a leading doctor has warned. From July 1, the federal government will overhaul its approach to funding treatment for patients with chronic diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes as part of its reforms to Medicare The government hopes the changes would 'simplify, streamline and modernise' the treatment of long-term diseases for both patients and doctors. But health experts warn they will remove the incentives in place for publicly-funded GPs to deliver quality care to their patients. Dr Kenneth McCroary, who chairs a prominent advocacy group for GPs in south-west Sydney, said the changes will halve the payments his doctors receive from the government for chronic disease treatment. 'We had these things called chronic health plans and chronic management plans and team-based care plans and mental health plans, which gave us a little bit more funding to spend more time with the patients and help look after them better,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'And so on July 1, what they're going to do is going to cut the funding for those plans... so it means that instead of being funded to spend some actual quality time working with our patients... we're going to take a 50 per cent cut in the payments for that quality care.' While he insisted the gutting of primary health was a bipartisan failure and not the fault of a single side of politics, he said former Labor champions of universal health care like Bob Hawke and Gough Whitlam would be 'rolling in their graves' over the way their party is managing Medicare. The changes will reduce the list of chronic health services through practices can bulk-bill through Medicare and substitute a shortened list of eligible services, including the preparation and review of chronic condition management plans. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Michael Wright also recognised the risks of the changes when they were first flagged last year. 'We know these chronic condition item numbers are crucial to support the financial viability of many practices, and they are the most commonly bulk billed items,' he told NewsGP. 'We were worried that these changes would reduce funding for these important services. When we surveyed our members last year 69 per cent said they would have to start charging a fee rather than bulk bill patients.' Dr McCroary estimated doctors at his practice would be lose out on funding to the equivalent of $40,000 to $45,000 per year. He believes the changes will benefit only those clinics that make a business out of quick, superficial chronic disease treatments. 'How the hell am I going to keep my doors open now, unless I turn into one of the bulk-billing medical centers that sees ten people an hour in-and-out my door every six minutes?' he asked. 'It's not the kind of medicine I want to practice; it's not the kind of medicine my colleagues want to practice; it's not the kind of medicine that community needs to keep them well and healthy and alive and out of hospital; but it's what the government continues to incentivize as it continues to bludgeon away at the core of primary care.' According to Victoria University, more than half of the Australian population lives with a chronic condition, a problem felt most acutely in less economically advantaged communities. Dr McCroary observes the effects of chronic diseases on a daily basis as practice principal at Macarthur General Practice in Campbelltown. 'Just yesterday, a couple came in, he's got heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis. She's got epilepsy and osteoporosis and diabetes and asthma and that's just off the top of my head,' he said. 'And they'll tell me: 'Please bulk bill us, otherwise, you know we can't afford to come here. We're only alive because of the care we get from you guys.'' 'They're our normal patient, they're the normal kind of people we see every day and now we're supposed to be looking after them at half the Medicare income. When asked how he plans to keep his Campbelltown practice open, Dr McCroary expected to work two full time jobs: one with his patients and another advocating for change. 'We're just going to keep trying. But, yeah, it gets hard,' he said.
CBC
07-05-2025
- Health
- CBC
Nurses rally at Manitoba Legislature to protest lack of improvement in health care
Hundreds of Manitoba nurses attended a rally at the legislature to call on the provincial government to "step up" and make notable improvements to a health-care system it promised to fix.
