Health minister says 10% 1Care levy 'impossible'

Employees will not be required to contribute 10 percent of their monthly income to the proposed healthcare insurance scheme 1Care, announced Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai yesterday.

"It is impossible for that to be the government's strategy. If I am going to take out 10 percent of my salary for healthcare, I myself would not agree," he said, referring to a point of the proposal that had received public brickbats.

He chided the opposition, saying that it had manipulated the numbers and information of 1Care to present half-truths.

"Our survey shows that household spends an average of 9.5 percent on healthcare, but the opposition created a picture that we are imposing 10 percent tax on the public," he said.

In his speech as a panelist on yesterday's "Chinese at the crossroads" forum, Liow (left) said the ongoing public debate on 1Care must be based on facts.

"Only then can will we know the rights and wrongs of the matter," he said.

Health Ministry's Unit for National Health Financing (NHF) deputy director Dr Rozita Halina Hussein recently said that the scheme would be mandatory to all Malaysians, although the government has yet to draw up its execution plan.

For starters, it was mooted that every individual be required to contribute a certain percentage of his or her income.

It is proposed that the pool of funds, channelled into a national healthcare financing authority, would also be bolstered by contributions from employers, similar to the compulsory deductions under the 1951 Employment Provident Fund (EPF) and the 1969 Social Security Act (Socso), and the government.

However, critics said that the scheme is only going to be another project awarded to cronies, where profits are privatised and losses bourne by the public.