How should we finance health care for people whose illnesses do not end when they leave the hospital? This is an increasingly important question for Malaysia as more people live with chronic and lifelong conditions requiring continuing treatment, monitoring and support.
For many patients, health care is not a single episode. It involves regular specialist consultations, medicines, diagnostic tests, monitoring, rehabilitation and, in some cases, expensive treatments that continue for years.
Yet conventional medical insurance remains largely centred on hospitalisation and acute episodes of illness. Our financing model needs to catch up with this reality.
The Hospitalisation Gap
Traditional medical insurance has largely been designed to protect people against unexpected events: an accident, an operation or a hospital admission. Chronic diseases are different.
