The Malaysian Health Coalition (MHC) has called for strong implementation of all Ministry of Health (MoH) projects and good governance in all spending pledged under the recently-tabled Budget 2023.

In a statement today, the coalition stressed Budget 2024 must be more strategic for Malaysia’s health sector.

“MHC welcomes the higher allocation to MoH and the introduction of the Government Procurement Act, announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim on Feb 24 for Budget 2023.

“We call for strong implementation of all MoH projects and for good governance in all spending. MHC further recommends three strategies for Budget 2024 and beyond,” said the coalition.

While Budget 2023 increases the tax relief for medical expenses, MHC asserted that there is still a strong focus on curative healthcare expenses rather than preventive expenses.

For instance, the coalition said medical expenses for curative services like “serious diseases” has an RM8,000 income tax relief cap, but preventive services like “vaccinations” are capped at only RM1,000.

MHC proposed that Budget 2024 gradually increase the tax relief cap for preventive healthcare services, perhaps with a scheduled increase such as a cap increase of RM1,000 per year every year between 2024 and 2029.

“Public health should receive similar scheduled increases; we note with disappointment that the allocations for disease control and health education are lower in 2023 compared to 2022.”

MHC suggested the government allocate funds for structural reforms, not just for operating expenses or capital expenditure.

“We understand that the RM36.3 billion MoH allocation is what Malaysia can afford right now, given our low fiscal ceiling, low tax-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio and high government debts.

“However, we call for deep structural reforms in our health system, which requires financial and non-financial resources. In other words, we must provide enough funds for the strategies envisioned by the Health White Paper scheduled to be tabled in Parliament in June 2023,” said the coalition.

MHC said a Health Reforms Commission, if passed by Parliament, must receive adequate funds to operate and to be successful, especially to address three structural issues: sustainable financing, human capital, and organisation of service delivery.

On top of that, the coalition lauded the announcement that 50 per cent of taxes collected from vaping products will be allocated to the MoH.

According to MHC, this brings Malaysia into a club of approximately 35 countries which “earmark” sin taxes from tobacco to allocate to public healthcare.

“We call for a decision on vaping products in Malaysia, and we favour its outright ban and we support the Generational End Game. More importantly, we ask that Malaysia uses sin taxes carefully, because we need answers to questions like ‘Are the earmarked taxes from vaping on top of the RM36.3 billion, or part of the RM36.3 billion?

“Whichever the answer, what if the earmarked taxes reduce in the future, but MoH has to continue funding multi-year anti-tobacco projects?” asked the coalition.

Pointing out that budgets are an important part of a democracy, MHC said Malaysia should focus on the structure and strategy of a budget, not just focus on the year-on-year increase or decrease in each line item of every budget.

Source:
courtesy of THE BORNEO POST

by LIM HOW PIM

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