PARLIAMENT | A DAP lawmaker yesterday filed a motion to inject an additional RM20.7 billion into the Health Ministry.

Charles Santiago (DAP-Klang) cited the drastic increase of patients in public hospitals and an incident where a leukaemia patient was denied medication at a government hospital for the motion.

He asked the Dewan Rakyat to pass the motion, by transferring RM12.4 billion from the Prime Minister's Department and RM8.3 billion from the Defence Ministry for the purpose of healthcare, claiming that the RM4.2 billion allocated for medicine next year is insufficient.

"Malaysians are burdened with the cost of medicines, especially patients with non-communicable diseases like cancer and heart problems, as prices are expensive," Charles (photo) said in his motion.

"They have been forced to take prescriptions to pharmacies to buy these medicines. This shows that the ‘out-of-pocket’ expenditure of patients is increasing and unbearable.

"Even the health minister admitted last year that ‘out-of-pocket’ expenditure will cause a financial meltdown for patients."

The increase in cost had caused at least 30 percent of patients to move from private to public hospitals, he added.

"Two weeks ago, a leukaemia patient from Klang indicated that his medication was stopped by Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah. He was told that since he is going to die anyway, the hospital did not want to waste the drug on him.

"Thus, doctors in public hospitals are now forced to play God and decide on a person’s lifespan as a result of the budget austerity," Charles said.

"I, therefore, call upon my fellow parliamentarians to support the move to push the government to allocate seven percent of the GDP for healthcare.

Budget 2018 is currently undergoing its third reading in the House, where allocations for each ministry will be debated and passed.

However, his motion was rejected by Dewan Rakyat speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia in a letter today, who said that the application had failed to meet the requirement for a debate to take place in the House.

A puzzled Charles asked deputy speaker Ronald Kiandee who was chairing the sitting in the speaker's stead.

Ronald asked him to refer to the administration, as the speaker's ruling could not be reviewed by the House.