20 September 2019

 

Press statement by MCA Deputy President Dato’ Dr Mah Hang Soon


Does MySalam protect the B40 or Insurance Companies?

 

The Pakatan Harapan government should look into reviewing the MySalam healthcare scheme, to ensure that it facilitates all Malaysians towards receiving professional, effective, and affordable public healthcare and treatment.

 

Since the initiation of the MySalam scheme to date, it has shown many flaws, even causing people to doubt, disregarding the huge sum of money being borne by the government, will it actually be able to reach and help the people who really needs them – the low-income group?

 

According to the scheme, it will only provide for the B40 group aged between 18 to 55 years old, as well as excluding those who were diagnosed with the 36 Critical Illnesses before 1 January 2019. Such a direction taken in the implementation of this scheme is strangely similar to that of any generic corporate insurance company, that is to reject the high-risk group. At the end, this scheme would not achieve its purpose of helping those low-income groups, but instead protect the wallets of insurance providers.

 

As people age, the risk of contracting diseases or developing health issues will increase exponentially - in other words, a time where one needs healthcare protection the most; Thus, this move or excluding low-income earners aged above 55 years, totally contradicts the spirit of protecting them.

 

We urge the PH government to thoroughly review this scheme which is supposed to be a pro-Rakyat incentive. After all, to help provide the people with professional, effective, and affordable healthcare and treatment is the government’s duty by nature. Hence it should not pass this responsibility to the corporate world which is probably more profit-oriented.

 

On the contrary, the PH government should research ways to improve the nation’s healthcare facility, reduce waiting times, reduce misdiagnosis, streamline the process for medical students doing their housemanship training, et cetera. Only by having an overall improvement to the healthcare service, can the low-income group truly experience improvement to their health needs.

 

Dato’ Dr Mah Hang Soon

MCA Deputy President

 

-MCA online-