THE Malaysian Health Coalition (MHC) has highlighted that the budget next year must be more strategic in dealing with health issues faced by the country. 

While it welcomed the higher allocation given to the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the introduction of the Government Procurement Act under Budget 2023, the coalition also called for strong implementation of all MOH projects and for good governance in all spending. 

In wanting a strategic health allocation, the MHC has recommended three strategies for Budget 2024 and beyond.  

The first was to focus on preventive care.  

MHC said Budget 2023 increased tax relief for medical expenses, but there was still a strong focus on curative healthcare expenses (rather than preventive expenses).  

“For example, medical expenses for curative services like dealing with serious diseases has an RM8,000 income tax relief cap, but preventive services like vaccinations are capped at only RM1,000.

“Budget 2024 should gradually increase the tax relief cap for preventive healthcare services, perhaps with a scheduled increase like ‘increase cap by RM1,000 per year every year between 2024-2029’,” the coalition said in a statement today.   

MHC said public health should also receive similar scheduled increases. 

The coalition expressed its disappointment that the allocations for disease control and health education are lower in 2023 compared to 2022. 

Secondly, the group urged to allocate funds for structural reforms and not just for Operating Expenses and Capital Expenditures.  

“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 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.  

“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,” it said.  

Finally, MHC wants the ‘sin tax’ to be used carefully. 

MHC said it lauded the announcement that 50% of taxes collected from vaping products will be allocated to the MOH.  

It also called for an outright ban on vaping products.  

“This brings Malaysia into a club of approximately 35 countries who ‘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 endgame.  

“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 is, what if the earmarked taxes reduce in the future, but MOH has to continue funding multi-year anti-tobacco projects?” it asked.  

MHC said that budgets are an important part of a democracy, and that 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. – March 3, 2023.