Martin Lee @ Sg
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More Reforms to Health Insurance Coming?

Health Minister Kwaw Boon Wan wrote on a recent meeting he had with all the health insurers to review the current health insurance scheme.

For the Medishield plans, there was some discussion to include coverage for mental illness, congenital illness and neonatal treatment. There were also comments on raising the claim limits on outpatient cancer care, so as to relieve the burden on cancer patients.

As for ElderShield, there was discussion on how to raise the monthly basic payout from $400 and to extend the payout period beyond 6 years.

I hope our basic Medishield can be extended to include guaranteed acceptance for all babies at birth. Currently, those newborns with certain pre-existing conditions can be rejected even from Medishield, which means (in the absence of proper advice) they would likely have to grow up without any form of health insurance.

Insurance is about pooling together financial resources to help pay for catastrophic events. If 1 in 10,000 babies is born with a serious defect, I feel it is better to have 9,999 people pay $1 more to help treat for that one baby than to have that 1 baby bear the cost of a $10,000 bill. After all, this is what insurance is all about.

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3 comments
VS Lingam says 13 years ago

Lion,

Your last para is beautiful. I couldn’t agree more.

The trouble with many ppl is that they will say:-

“why must I pay $1 more when I am not benefitting from it? Someone else (ie baby with defect) is benefitting at my expense.”

IMHO, this kind of reasoning is flawed. Insurance biz must have cross-subsidy to be viable.

Reply
Norman Tsai says 13 years ago

Hi Lion,

I believe there is a typo-error in this line:

“Currently, those newborns with certain pre-existing conditions can be rejected even from Medishield, which means (in the absence of proper advice) they would likely have to grow up with any form of health insurance.”

I believe it should be:

“… they would likely have to grow up WITHOUT any form of health insurance.”

I wish for the same thing as you.

Cheers!

Reply
    lioninvestor says 13 years ago

    Yes, Norman. Thanks for pointing that out.

    Reply
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