Insurance & Costs of having and raising a child

[martinlee]

That is true for Medishield Intergrated private plans.

But there are lots of medical/ hospitalization health plans which are not integrated with Medishield.

Why do you find it a superior scheme?

It isn't fair to compare the premiums of Medishield Life to the private shield plans. They cover very different things.

Medishield Life covers for B2 and C wards, while the private plans cover B1, A or private hospitals.

To put things into perspective, the new premiums for Medishield Life (for certain age groups) is more than the prevailing premiums for private plans that can cover for B1 or A class.

From a social equality perspective, this is as near a universal health care coverage as one can get, compared to the previous version of Medishield. They don't even discriminate for pre-existing conditions and super old citizens. Because its open to nearly everyone and funded with the resources of the Singapore govt (and hence taxpayers) I would consider it superior to any offers by private insurers who will raise premiums at the drop of their hat to make their profit margins.

There are some costs to doing this and to avoid dipping entirely into the taxpayer pot they have tried to do some risk sharing with the younger generation. After all everyone gets old and the benefits come back through the cycle.

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My reference of private plans is for seniors 70+ :- their premiums are much more than what is offered by Medishield Life. Yes its class A vs B2/C but it is still something that needs to be paid out-of-pocket. Someone who earns 4-5k pm who can easily afford the private shield plans now (ya don't buy the cheng hu plan because the smart people said its more expensive) will come in for a rude shock when they reach older age and find that these now cost multiple times the previous premiums. Eventually these people will return to Medishield Life and taxpayers will have to pick up the slack.

Nothing wrong, if you want to be inclusive from a societal point of view. This is however wrong from fairness to Singapore taxpayers perspective because it allows private insurers to milk the profit in the low risk years and then passing it back to the govt when these people get old and too expensive to cover profitably.

Personally I am happy for these changes and if taxes need to be upped to pay for this I am fine because it is a necessary and good safety net.

What is the best course of action for someone like me??
I am 33 this year..

So I should keep my private plans till middle age and then switch to Medishield Life for optimum coverage vs premiums?

If the govt wants to prevent ".. private insurers to milk the profit in the low risk years and then passing it back to the govt when these people get old and too expensive to cover profitably...", the govt should just ban private plans outright and puts everyone on MediShield Life....

What I foresee from this is that the private insurers will raise premiums using the Medishield life universal coverage as reasons...

Everyone seems to forget that the private plans are integrated with Medishield, hence there is no milking by the private insurers.

There is no way of dropping of the Medishield plan to take up the private plan.

Everyone is in the Medishield pool whether they opt for a private plan or not.

When private insurer X collects $300 in premiums, they will have to pay Medishield their share of the premium.

Thus the private rates will never be lower than the Medishield rates.

The existing rates are lower, but they will have to be increased to take into account the new Medishield premiums.

Yes, but for the context of this discussion, I was referring to the integrated plans.