Contextualising Obamacare into our landscape: will it work here?
One of the more contentious issues in the private health insurance landscape in Malaysia is the issue of the challenges in accessing medical insurance by those with predisposing conditions — due to their potentially higher risk.
I had previously put forward the case of the US — a health system predominantly financed through private health insurance, and pointed out how they managed to, via the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, include everyone with predisposing conditions into the risk-pool while still managing to keep the system afloat.
Can this be practically done within the Malaysian private health insurance landscape?
Here are some possible suggestions on how this could be done, as well as the factors that need to be in place to
make it happen.
Two key conditions are required to admit individuals with predisposing conditions into the risk-pool.
First, the risk-pool has to be widened. This means that everyone should come into the risk pool, that is, all individuals should be…
