Malaysian Medical Association president Dr Subramaniam Muniandy told FMT that the association would like the government to divert funds from “ministries with decreased activity or with lower needs”, such as tourism and sports, to the medical sector.
The government should also consider increasing the registration fee paid by patients at government hospitals by RM2 to RM5, he said.
He said based on the 77 million annual patient visits, the government could get anything between RM154 million and RM385 million to defray the cost of medicines.
Subramaniam said the pandemic had exposed weaknesses in Malaysia’s healthcare system and hopes funds will be earmarked for infrastructure development in the medical sector.
To ease the financial strain on general practitioners (GPs), he hoped a 50% rebate could be provided on GPs’ taxable income and a 1% to 2% lowering of their tax rate.
He said GPs also required deductions for clinic expansion and Covid-19 screening equipment and subsidies for purchases of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Tenders for pharmaceutical companies
Billy Urudra, president of the Malaysian Organisation of Pharmaceutical Industries, said the Covid-19 pandemic had heightened the need for self-sufficiency in medicine as Malaysia “can’t rely as heavily on imports in times of crisis”.
He called for the reinstatement of the “off-take agreements” that were halted by the previous government due to concerns over contracts awarded without tenders.
“These companies got an off-take agreement which allowed them to go into direct negotiations with the government to supply products they have manufactured locally.”
Urudra said before being stopped by the old administration, these agreements had attracted billions in investments and helped create highly skilled jobs in the industry.
He urged the government to guarantee the award of at least 30% of pharmaceutical tenders to local manufacturers.
He said this would prove to be an incentive for companies to compete with “the big boys” like Pfizer and Novartis. He accused them of practising predatory pricing in the past to undercut local producers and win tenders.
Take ‘smart partnership’ further
Dr Kuljit Singh, president of the Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia, said there is a potential for a “smart partnership” with private hospitals to lighten the load on public hospitals.
“For certain cases, government hospitals can offload patients to private hospitals. This will help clear some of their long waiting lists for procedures, surgeries and imaging that are building up,” he said.
Paying the costs of these transferred cases would still be much cheaper than building new public hospitals, he said.