The Land of Dead
Ever been in the situation where you were admitted to a hospital in an emergency situation? You feel calm in the beginning because you felt safe in a comfort of a hospital, under the care of beautiful nurses, supervision of a great specialist and the most important, sleeping on a nice clean bed sheet and having meal in the comfort of your own room. THIS IS HEAVEN!Suddenly, the nightmare came up after 1 or 2 weeks. The hospital bill is the most hectic part of your trip to the so called heaven. Your ambulance cost, EMT cost, room cost and a whole bunch of side cost. Not to mention your specialist cost, drugs cost and your consultancy cost. In Malaysia we have a pretty good subsidy from our government for the health care but still do not cover the whole charge of the bill.
This is where the insurance company will make their move and started to offer you their lifeline. Unaware patient will buy this insurance without hesitation because of the tight situation. How many of you know about types of situation that will make you the lucky one to receive the insurance money?
The answer is, only a little! There is a lot of disease that not being covered buy medical insurance company and sadly, many of it is the most common problem that will happen to you like flu, hepatitis, jaundice, heart attack, asthma etc.
The health system in our country Malaysia thankfully is average and the insurance companies is fair an aware of this situation. However, we need to remember that insurance cover the disease not the drugs. They cover most of the diagnosis and consultancy part of the treatment but none for the part where you need to go to the pharmacy and buy your own drugs. The price of drugs in Malaysia is fair but is not exactly the kind of accommodation that we suppose to have for a citizen in the country.
Have you ever been to a pharmacy at Paris or England? They have a special organization, NHS that responsible to observe and fight for patient right in the country. Thanks to their effort they have a flat rate of drugs for you to buy. Example, 10tb. of normal paracetamol will cost GBP6.65, 100tb. of normal paracetamol will cost GBP6.65 and 1000tb. of normal paracetamol will also cost you only GBP6.65. See the different? None! It's flat rate. Egypt for example, there are no fear for you to go to the pharmacy as you will only buying medicine under EGP10 at the most for normal kind of sickness like cough, flu or headache.
What is happening in this two countries? Their government care for the health system of the country. They have special subsidy for health system to rely on. Malaysia? The only subsidy that we are fighting for is the petrol subsidies. What happen to our care about our own body? What happen to the hefty amount of tax that we paid for everything that we have? Road tax, service tax and a lot more of taxes.
This article is not meant for you to go acquire a permanent residence permit for other country. It is not for you to look higher at another country. We love our country, we love our people. We need to fight for our right and the importance of this issues. I have a dream that i really want to make it come true. I want to fight and revolutionize the health care system in Malaysia to be better. Not only for me and my family but for the whole people who are in Malaysia because we all have the common rights and needs as a Malaysian. Not for us, but for the sake of our children and grandchildren in the future.
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