Why your GP's fee stayed stuck for so long

Mostly because the fee could sit still while the bill moved. Clinics made up the gap on medicine, so a low consultation fee stayed survivable, and each time a rise came up, someone had a reason to wait. That's my reading of the reports, not something I can find anyone admitting.

Older than your phone, by a lot

For decades, a GP in a private clinic was held to a consultation fee of RM10 to RM35.¹ CodeBlue calls it the 1992 rate.²

The New Straits Times has a nicer way of saying it: that's from before the Petronas Twin Towers went up.⁵

How long one fee range lasted

So why did nobody move it?

It wasn't for lack of trying. In 2013 the rates for GPs in private hospitals went up, and clinic GPs were left where they were.² A lawmaker who is also a GP was still asking in 2019 who had left them out, and I couldn't find an official answer.²

That year the National Cost of Living Action Council declined to bring clinic fees into line, pending further study of the effect on the public. Two impact analyses had already been done.²

Weeks later, the Cabinet decided to deregulate the fees altogether, but the amendments still had to be gazetted.³ Whatever became of that decision, the cap stayed: CodeBlue was still quoting the RM35 ceiling in 2025, and The Star's report on the 2026 revision gives RM10 to RM35 as the range being replaced.⁴

I can see the council's worry. A fee rise lands first on people paying out of their own pockets, and that's exactly who a cost-of-living council exists to think about. Still, one more study looks to me like a slower way of saying no.

The fee was stuck. The bill wasn't.

Here's the rest of my answer: the pressure had somewhere to go. Nobody leaves a clinic having paid only for the consultation.

PMCare, a third-party administrator that runs company panels, reported its averages for most of 2025.⁴ About RM100 of each payment to a panel GP was medicine, and RM34 was the consultation, right up against the cap.⁴

That's one panel's average, not your corner clinic's. But a practising GP told the NST that a simple cough and cold in his area costs RM70 to RM80, consultation and medicine together.⁵

The president of the private doctors' federation calls medicine profits "a pragmatic workaround", and says they're not profiteering.⁵ I think that's fair. I also think it's why the fee lasted: with the total able to move, clinics could limp along, and a limp is easy for everyone else to ignore.

Limping is the right word

He says a typical clinic needs at least RM40,000 a month, before the doctor's pay or any loan.⁵ On a flat RM30 fee, he says, that takes about 53 patients a day, nearly three times the actual average.⁵

Medicine isn't a gold mine either. By his estimate, a clinic buying RM12,000 of stock a month clears only a few thousand ringgit on it.⁵

Patients a day to cover RM40,000 on fees alone

So a clinic charging the new ceiling to every single patient would only about cover the rent and wages. I can't see that happening on a cold, and the sum tells me the old fee was never close.

What finally changed the sum?

Medicine prices went on display in 2025, and the federation says that made things worse.⁵ The Galen Centre, a health policy group, had warned that more people might ask for a prescription and buy from a pharmacy instead.

That's the workaround with its cover off. Once the medicine has a visible price, it's harder for it to quietly carry the consultation.

Then the review landed. The ceiling went to RM80 and the gazette took effect in April 2026, with the floor left where it was.¹

I can't prove the display rule pushed it along, since the review was already running. The order of events is hard to ignore, though.

The federation calls this a long-overdue correction more than a conventional increase.¹ It also warns that the real effect depends on panels and administrators, where pricing may not be fully market-driven, and I couldn't find numbers yet on what clinics have actually moved to.

What I'd take from it

If you own a business with a capped price, this is worth a slow think. The money will find a line that isn't capped, and that line quietly becomes your business model. You'd only find out how much you lean on it when someone makes you print it.

As a patient, I'd remember that RM80 is a ceiling, not a price.¹ A ten-minute cold and a long talk about diabetes were never the same job, and now the fee is at least allowed to say so.