Medical insurance premiums have been increasing at an annual rate of 6% to 8% over the past few years. This is something LIAM is looking very closely into to discover the root causes and to find solutions.
One of the reasons for the increase is the high medical costs. According to Willis Towers Watson’s 2019 Global Medical Trends Survey Report, Malaysia was ranked No 2 out of 13 countries in Asia in terms of medical costs.
Last year, medical costs in the country increased 13.1%, mainly due to the availability and adoption of new medical technologies and equipment. The countries with the highest increase in medical costs were Vietnam (16.3%), followed by Malaysia, the Philippines (11.5%), Indonesia (10.8%) and China (10.7%).
But these costs are not the only factor to the high medical insurance premiums. Other issues include the design of these medical insurance plans or particular hospital charges (which include consultation fees, hospitalisation fees, the cost of operating theatre and more).
These stakeholders are the insurers, Ministry of Health, private healthcare service providers and medical insurance policyholders. Medical Cost Containment Task Force (MCCTF) was established by LIAM, the General Insurance Association of Malaysia (PIAM), Malaysian Takaful Association (MTA) and Bank Negara Malaysia last year. It carried out an independent study on the key drivers of increasing medical insurance premiums.
The issue of escalating premiums is not unique to Malaysia. In fact, Singapore acted last year to contain the rising medical insurance premiums in the city state. One of the things the Singaporean government did was to introduce co-insurance plans. Policyholders of co-insurance plans pay a lower medical insurance premium in exchange for paying a fixed percentage of the medical costs in their claims.
No comments:
Post a Comment