The Pros And Cons Of National Health Insurance

Title: National Health Insurance-The pros and cons National Health Insurance (NHI) is a legally enforced scheme of health insurance to make sure that all the citizen are provided with essential health care services regardless of their employment status and their ability to contribute monetary benefits to the NHI fund. The funding mechanism and policy of NHI is different from country to county. The country that practice this National Health Insurances scheme including Japan, Australia, Germany, Taiwan, South Korea and others. In Malaysia, the government has recently proposed “1 care for 1 Malaysia” to reform the health care system by replacing the existing tax-based funded system with a mandatory social health insurance scheme. The purpose

Every citizen has an equal access to the medical health care, this help to improve the health status of general population. When healthier environment are created, the mortality and morbidity rate can be reduced. According to the scheme, the population can get free treatment for the basic conditions without being fear of not able to afford. The case of infectious disease also can be reduced when patient are freely accessible to the health care services. For example, if the patients having tuberculosis, but he or she does not seek for medical treatment because of the cost of treatment can actually cause harm his friends and family as well as the society. Tuberculosis is a highly infectious disease which can be spread easily through airborne route. This situation can be control if the patients can access to health care services and there will be reduction in amount of illnesses suffered by the

The implementation of NHI might affect those who has existing insurance. Those who already have health coverage are satisfied with the existing system. They afraid it will affect the health coverage such as having less assess to the health care services if any changes to the system occurred. For those who afford to buy private medical insurance, they still have to participate in the NHI. The criteria of participating in NHI as contributor and as a patient has been made clearly to avoid any confusion. For those who earn above certain level, they need to contribute to the NHI fund by law. This means that if a person already purchase the private medical scheme, he or she would have to pay for both the private medical scheme as well as the NHI. In addition, the presence of NHI might affect the insurance company in the country where there will be a loss of income for insurance agent who sell the medical insurance