Your medical card costs more again. Here is the real reason.

Aiyo, that letter again. Your medical card costs more this year. Same card, same you, just more money out the door.

Mama knows what you thought first. These insurance people, always want to squeeze us. Fair lah, they are the ones who posted the letter. But Mama went and read the whole thing properly, and the story is messier than that. Three things push your price up. Only one of them is the insurer.

Here is the short answer. Medical costs here go up about 16% a year. Normal prices go up 2 to 3%. Three things push that medical number so high. Big parts of a private hospital bill have no price rule. A person with a card almost never asks the price. And the cover limit jumped a lot. It went from RM100,000 to RM5 million. There is no ceiling left to push against. Bank Negara now makes them spread a big hike over three years or more. And whatever you do, do not cancel your card. That is the one move that really hurts.

Your teh tarik went up 20 sen. Your hospital bill went up a lot more.

Normal prices in Malaysia go up 2 to 3% a year. Your nasi lemak, your Maggi at the sundry shop, your Grab fare. Annoying, but you can feel it coming. Medical costs do not follow that rule at all. Aon puts Malaysia’s medical trend rate at 16% for 2026, up from 15%. Highest since 2021.

Your card is just following that number. If claims cost 16% more this year, the price of your card has to move too. Nothing personal about you.

The doctor’s fee is capped. The gauze is not.

Now let Mama explain the part nobody tells you. Your hospital bill has two halves.

One half has a price set by the government. Your doctor’s fee sits in a fixed range. Certain surgeries too. Good rule. If you get a heart attack tonight, nobody should be free to charge you any price they like.

The other half has no price rule at all. The theatre rental, the devices, the bed, the pills, the gauze on your wound. On Mr Money TV, Peter gives one example. The same packet of gauze can be RM50 in one hospital and RM5 in the next.

You already understand this, actually. Teh tarik at the mamak, RM2.50. Same teh tarik in a hotel lobby, RM18. Roti canai RM1.50 at the roadside, RM12 in a mall. Same tea, same roti. You are paying for the aircon, the staff, the address. A hospital bed works the same way. But you are lying there sick. No one in that bed wants to compare prices.

When the card pays, nobody looks at the price

Now the hard part. Mama has to be honest with you.

You are good with prices. You know Maggi is cheaper at the sundry shop than at 7-Eleven. You know which pasar malam stall gives the better deal. You will drive an extra five minutes for cheaper petrol. But would you argue over RM50 for one packet of gauze? Of course not. You never saw the number. The card paid it.

Think about durian for a second. When the season comes and the market is flooded, the price drops. More supply, cheaper fruit. That is normal. Private hospitals do not work like that. You can have three of them within ten minutes of your house and the price still climbs. Nobody in that ward is shopping on price, so they do not compete on price. They compete on valet parking, a nicer room, better food. All of that costs money. And the money is yours, one year later, in that letter.

Same story on the claims side. Do not forget what an insurer is. It is a business, not a kenduri. It sets your price on how much it thinks people will claim. When claims run higher than that, the price goes up for everyone in the pool. Including you, even if you have not claimed once in ten years. Mama knows that part feels very unfair. It is still how it works.

The RM5 million limit broke things

Go back twenty years. A card that paid RM100,000 a year was normal. RM300,000 was a big plan.

Then one company launched a RM1 million card to grab market share. The rest had to follow or lose their clients. Today RM5 million a year is sitting on the shelf. As Peter puts it, claiming RM5 million in one year is close to impossible for most of us.

But that big number does not just sit there quietly. Once the ceiling is that high, nobody has a reason to keep the bill small. The hospital knows there is room. So does the patient. And the bill grows into that space, year after year.

Someone is trying to fix this

Mama does not want you to close this page feeling helpless. So here is the other side.

Bank Negara brought in a rule at the end of 2024. A big price hike must be spread over three years or more. That rule runs to the end of 2026. Bank Negara says at least eight in ten people should see a rise of under 10% a year. And if you are 60 or above and on the smallest plan in your product, you get a one-year pause.

The bigger fix is called DRG, short for diagnosis-related group. Right now the hospital bills you item by item. Every packet of gauze has its own line. Under DRG it gets one fixed fee instead. The fee is set by what is wrong with you and what they did. It starts with private hospitals, through a new basic plan. A full national one is due in 2027. As of early 2026 it was still at the data stage. Good news, but slow news. Do not plan your budget around it yet.

What Mama wants you to do this month

You cannot fix the system. You can look after your own family inside it.

• Do not cancel. Downgrade first. This one Mama really must press. A smaller plan or a lower room limit will bring the price down. So will a bigger deductible, the part you pay yourself before the card kicks in. Drop the card and you will have to buy a new one later. By then you are older, and your health is what it is. Kena reject also can.
• Actually read what your card pays. The room limit is what decides your ward. Most of us have never once looked at ours.
• Plan for next year too, not just this one. The rise is spread out, so more is coming. Put it in your monthly plan now, while it is still small.
• Ask for the itemised bill. Look at it before you sign. You are allowed to, and nobody will scold you.
• Claim when you need to, not because it feels free. Every extra claim comes back to the pool. Your family is in that pool too.
• Keep a cash buffer. The bits your card does not cover still need real money. Here is how much emergency fund you actually need.

You are not being cheated. The whole thing is just expensive.

If your price keeps climbing, it is not because you chose the wrong company. Medical costs here rise four to five times faster than the rest of your life. That bill has to land somewhere, and it lands on all of us together.

What you can control is smaller, but it is real. Know your plan. Know your buffer. And know what you will pay next year, before the letter shows up and spoils your week.

That last one is the easy part, and Mama can do it with you. Get the MoneyMama app. Log what you pay, right in the chat you use every day. Type “insurance RM280” and Mama sorts it out. In a few months you will see exactly what your cover costs you. Then the next letter is just a number you already planned for.