Compare the Similarities and Differences Between United Kingdom and Malaysia Healthcare System

Title:         Compare the similarities and differences between United Kingdom and Malaysia healthcare system.

       Date:  16-02-2018

1. Introduction

        Acknowledged by all historical books, a strong empire always come with a well-developed healthcare system. This showed that completed healthcare system is important in this modern day. In order to raise up a country, development of healthcare system must be the prior agenda of the country. This is because having a healthy citizen will largely contribute to the wellness and development of the country. In fact, having an advanced healthcare system a country must allocate substantial budget for the development. In Malaysia (MAS), the development and evaluation of current healthcare system are conducted by Ministry of Health (MOH). While in United Kingdom (UK) the healthcare system is provided by National Health Services (NHS).  

        This is an open secret, there are few similarities and differences between UK and MAS healthcare system. In MAS rapid transformation of the healthcare system occurred after the colonies in MAS by European countries. Previously, traditional healthcare system plays a vital role in the society, for example, Chinese’s traditional treatment and herbs, this is because MAS consists of multiple races. However, after the introduction of western healthcare system, it had slowly and surely become the dominant health care system in MAS. As a developing county, the rapid development of MAS healthcare system started after the independent from UK colonies.

1. Content

        Firstly, Both UK and MAS implements a two-tier public-private healthcare system. All citizens have opportunities to assess the public healthcare, while the private healthcare is available to public that able to afford it. The public healthcare system in MAS is adapted from the UK healthcare system which is from the NHS. However, differs from NHS except for the dental consultation, every consultation in MAS public healthcare system is charged for RM2 expect an individual who is older than 60 years old. This charged included the consultation and the medication or further diagnosis procedure. Nevertheless, based on the lecture note, the expenses of the NHS are covered by the contribution of national insurance and general taxation from the citizen in UK. Besides that, NHS also earn some funding from the payment of dental consultation and others.

Alarmingly, due to the weakness of global economics, both NHS and public healthcare system in MAS are facing financial problem. This had created a massive burden to the government of both countries as the medical expenses nowadays had increased significantly. Mentioned by reliable news the GDP percentage spent on healthcare ranks MAS at number 156 in the world. [1] Besides that, it is found that majority Malaysians prefer seeking assistance in public healthcare facilities. In contrast, the government only spent 52.4% of the total healthcare expenses although there is a high demand for the public healthcare services. [1] This may indicate two situations which MAS facing; the high cost of private healthcare facilities in MAS, and public who is affordable prefer to receive treatment in private healthcare facilities. This is because the private sector usually provides more advanced equipment, while public services face a substantial equipment and expertise deficiency.

On the other hand, private healthcare in UK is increasing but the public healthcare still dominating the market. According to research, 53% of UK population would consider for private healthcare treatment if it is affordable. Besides that, 62% of the members believe introduce of private healthcare system play a role to reduce NHS waiting lists. [3] This proves that the private facilities in UK are arising. For both UK and MAS, the rise of private healthcare system majority caused by the excessively long waiting list in public hospital. However, the difference between UK and MAS is Malaysian choose public facilities as there have the more advanced equipment and expertise, but this does not affect the decision for the UK population. Although, most population in UK still prefer to receive treatment in NHS, however, there is 41% of the people in UK believe that the current healthcare system cannot last until 2020. [3]

1. Recommendation

Furthermore, as mentioned above the major limitation that persisted in both UK and MAS healthcare system is the excessive long waiting list in the public facilities. This can be improved by reorganisation of the healthcare system. In UK NHS hospitals should be standardised by having similar amount of equipment and expertise. This manages to distribute the patient equally in every hospital. NHS should educate the public about the crisis of overcrowded in major NHS hospital, therefore the public should cooperate with NSH by not rushing to major NHS hospital for minor illness. However, in MAS MOH should propose for building more public hospital in the rural area and provide more attractive allowance for the doctor to attract more doctors to serve in the public sector. Furthermore, MOH should enforce the healthcare system by tracing the usage of the allocated budget, because the budget must be used effectively utilised for the development of healthcare system.