What it costs to be ill

No-one wants to think about being ill, but medical care and hospitalisation may impose a significant financial burden if you’re not prepared.

Financial planning usually assumes your income remains constant or increases in the years to come. But this isn’t always the reality. For example, an injury or illness may sometimes affect your ability to work, or prevent you from working altogether.

These factors, coupled with rising medical and healthcare costs, make it important to plan for the possibility of large medical expenses. As the region has prospered economically, accompanying changes in lifestyle have led to the increased incidence of chronic illnesses. This leads to both more frequent claims and greater medical costs.

Public healthcare is cheaper in Malaysia than some other countries in Southeast Asia. But demand is growing fast, often resulting in the need to turn to the private medical sector. Here, 79 per cent of treatments are paid for by patients, directly from their own pockets, making them susceptible to rising medical costs. Medical inflation averages about 10 per cent each year in Malaysia. Use online calculators like the critical illness cover calculator to help you work out how much financial support you may need.

Unfortunately, the costs of being ill have risen steeply. But the silver lining is that costs are manageable if appropriate measures are taken in advance. Having comprehensive insurance coverage is the first step. Health insurance helps to reimburse the fees incurred during hospitalisation, and offset some of the outpatient treatment costs such as medication and consultancy charges. Some policies also provide an income replacement stream, if you’re not able to work.

Having the right health insurance helps you to take care of life’s uncertainties - allowing you to plan towards a secure, stress-free future.