Healthcare Costs Rose Faster In 2025 As Health Inflation Hit 3%

Christina Chandra

9th July 2026 - 2 min read

Healthcare costs in Malaysia continued to climb in 2025, with health inflation rising to 3.0% from 1.4% a year earlier, according to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM). The increase was driven by higher healthcare service costs, particularly insurance expenditure, which rose 9.0% compared with 2024.

DOSM’s Preliminary Report of the Malaysia Health Price Index 2025 found that the Health Services category recorded the largest increase, rising from 0.9% in 2024 to 4.4% in 2025 .

What Got More Expensive?

Medicines remain the biggest health-related expense for Malaysian households, accounting for 38.9% of the Health Price Index weighting.

Medicine prices increased 2.7% in 2025, up from 2.2% a year earlier, while health equipment prices rose 1.2%, up from 0.6% in 2024.

Among selected countries, Malaysia’s health inflation rate of 3.0% was lower than Vietnam’s 5.3%, but higher than Thailand’s -0.8% in 2025.

Medical Insurance Premiums Continue To Rise

The report comes after many medical insurance policyholders saw their premiums increase earlier this year. Health insurance premiums rose 7% in 2025, after medical insurance and takaful costs increased 21.6% in 2024.

Bank Negara Malaysia’s interim measures require premium adjustments to be spread over at least three years. This means some policyholders may continue seeing higher renewal premiums through 2026, depending on their insurer and policy.

Christina Chandra

Christina writes about personal finance with an eye for making the complicated feel straightforward. She is drawn to the everyday money decisions people face and genuinely enjoys finding the clearest way to explain them. Between articles, she is probably napping, on a hiking trail, or terrorising her sister’s cats.

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