Increases in medical bills are outpacing the general inflation rate each year. That raises the question whether healthcare is reserved only for those who can afford it

“I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for”
- American bureaucrat, James H. Boren (1925)

WHAT is the value of a human’s health? Sixteenth-century English scholar and vicar at Oxford University Robert Burton put it at such: “Restore a man to his health, and his purse lies open to thee.”

That denotes that health is priceless, and almost everyone would pay anything to get well. (But why people does not pay to stay healthy? Aren’t human weird?)

With the doctors’ power to demand, medical services do not come cheap.

And with the continuous rise of investments in research and development as well as the adoption of the latest technologies to deal with the rapid emergence of new and complicated illnesses (and the re-emergence of some deadly ones), healthcare costs are soaring by the day.

So, who can afford to fall sick these days?

Across the world, the increases in doctors’ bills are outpacing the general inflation rate each year. It is estimated that the global medical inflation averages about 10% each year.

In Malaysia, medical inflation is estimated to be around 15% each year. That is to say, a simple appendicitis surgery that cost RM1,800 three years ago will set you back by about RM3,000 today.

Excerpt from TheStarBiz