Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Insurance for kidney failure patient

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Insurance for kidney failure patient

Hi Mr. Tan,

Hope that you can advise me. I am a kidney failure patient. and have two young children. What kind of insurance policy should I take up for them using my name or my wife's name? And also what type of insurance should I get for myself in my condition.
CH

REPLY
I hope that you are personally covered under Medishield or a private Shield plan. It is important that you have this cover for your own medical expenses.

You can buy a Medishield plan for your children. There is no need to buy life insurance for them. You should have savings to take care of your future needs. Read these FAQs:
http://www.tankinlian.com/faq/savings.html
http://www.tankinlian.com/faq/fptips.html

You will find it difficult to get life insurance due to your medical condition. Perhaps you can buy personal accident insurance. Read this FAQ:
http://www.tankinlian.com/faq/pa.html

15 comments:

zhummmeng said...: I don't think you are insurable anymore but don't lose hope.If you have a H&S and medisave that will take care of some your treatment cost. To take care of the rest you must consider self insurance,ie. have enough money when it is needed. Start a regular investing plan and make sure you get a qualified honest and competent financial planner to help you.Live healthily, with proper diets and a regime of exercise.
Remember you are the priority and after you have satisfied all your needs then think of your children and others.
For your children and wife insure them with an H&S medishield or have a private health shield if you can afford.IF YOU CAN AFFORD you may want to consider insuring them with critical illness insurance BUT and BUT don't waste your money on whole life plan. Insure them with a 5 or 10 year renewal term(renewability gauranteed) CI with minimum $100K. They cost you about $14 a month each, anyway very cheap.
Mr., don't wallow in regret that you didn't have an insurance. The issue is health and of course if you have money it is better to take care and provide some financial cushion BUT insurance CANNNOT prevent it from happening, so don't get it wrong. Insurance agents will love to add salt to your wound.
For your children why term insurance? You mustn't strain your financial resources and term gives the cheapest and the highest coverage...and that is what all of us need .If you buy whole life how much can you afford? It is always not enough but insurance agents don't care. So long they have enough commission even a small coverage they dare and have the conscience to recommend, these despicable agents.
Start looking for that honest and competent financial planner but please DO NOT engage an insurance salesman. It will be like from the pan to the fire for you if you get salesman from ANY company.; June 22, 2008 3:57 PM
Unknown said...: Yep it will be very tough if not impossible to get any protection for yourself lest from any financial institution.But hang in there you have yr wife & yr kids to see through.

For them: Ensure that they are covered by a gd healthshield plan
or basic medishield cover

Thought of unit trusts?

Lastly: Watch yr phosphate & control fluid intake

A 10-yr young kidney patient; June 23, 2008 3:55 AM
Thomas Phua's Blog said...: My mum's kidney is now left with 10% kidney function and if it fails further kidney dialysis is needed.

My friend's mother is already on kidney dialysis.Each month, Incomeshield pays $2000 for the dialysis, and other cost that is beyond the cover can be up to $700 more in expenses.

Say what one like, wholelife plan, especially those with limited premium payment may be good for last stage of one's life.

I have 3 Living Policy myself taken over the years when there was no limited premium payment plan then. In my old age, I will continue these policies, so that I will not be a burden to the next generation. I wish limited premium plan was available then.

Premium can be high for wholelife, but it gives one peace of mind in old age.

Yes, I am a Financial Adviser, and this is what I see in my friend's mother and my own mother.

Shield Plan is the most basic important plan to have. A dread disease wholelife of appropriate amount will be helpful.; June 23, 2008 6:11 PM
zhummmeng said...: Mr. Financial adviser, I think you are a little confused about CI coverage. The issue is NOT 'don't buy CI" but is about whether you have enough of it. Why whole life or limited premium CI are NOT suitable because most people cannot afford enough of it and despicable insurance agents are pushing them because of the high commission.
Look at your own confession.You have 3. WHy 3? You should have addressed your CI needs in one go. You should know pretty well as a financial adviser that you MUST meet the client's need straight away and cannot postpone.....Why? Why? The obvious answer is you couldn't afford all of it at once because wholelife was expensive.You were confused by the saving element and that distorted your rationality.Don't you think that would have put you in great danger at that point in time? What would have happened if a CI struck you before you could have a chance to buy the second policy?
This is the shit insurance agents do when they sell insurance, they are motivated by commission and not the client's need.(term plans don't seem to exist)
Who says term insurance cannot cover you for whole life? How long is whole life? 90 years old? 100 years old? Are they not long enough?
Do you want to keep your 3 policies till this age? Don't give us the crap. By 60 or 65 you will be eyeing the cash value and worse the cash value is decreasing before your eyes or not moving at all.
If you are really concerned about helping people to address CI, help them with the cheapest plan so that they will have enough and with adequate coverage .Not with whole life and definitely not with limited premium payment plans.These plans are good for rich people with lots of money to splurge and NOT the man in the street.The man in the street NEED them and the rich only WANT them. You see the difference as a financial adviser?
It is the commission that agents are interested.Please come clean of it. A lot of people suffer this fate because of insurance agents are not honest and NOT COMPETENT to help people.; June 23, 2008 8:53 PM
Unknown said...: zhummmeng, you are too self opinionated, and your comments are full of bitterness! From your comments it's highly possible you were an agent, not a very successful one, and certainly a very bitter one. Otherwise you felt cheated so badly by some crapy agents that you "uses one bamboo and flip the whole boat of agents in it"! Term plans are good, but has its limitations. Participating plans have its merits but also its limitations. Health plans are good but also comes with limitations. Investment linked products have its merits and also its limitations. If you cannot trust anyone, do your homework before you buy anything.

You wrote,"Who says term insurance cannot cover you for whole life? How long is whole life? 90 years old? 100 years old? Are they not long enough?" Pardon my lack of knowledge of such a source, pray please tell me which company issues term plans with cheap premiums & covers me for whole life, say up to 85 or 90 years old.

You wrote again, " Don't give us the crap. By 60 or 65 you will be eyeing the cash value and worse the cash value is decreasing before your eyes or not moving at all." Participating plans are disciplined compulsory savings plans, much like how you have been forced to contribute to CPF and now you have saved some money! If one is the type who eye the cash values at 60 or 65, then all the more he should take up participating plans! This is because the fact that he eye the cash value is because he is in need of money! That means he has not been disciplined in his accumulation of wealth for his retirement! Since he is not as disciplined as zhummmeng who buys terms and invest the rest for his retirement, he is unlikely to have saved anything for retirement, and if he buys term plans as aggressively recommended by zhummmeng, MR Tan and SKhim, then he would be miserable & poor at age 60 or 65!

You wrote again," It is the commission that agents are interested.Please come clean of it. A lot of people suffer this fate because of insurance agents are not honest and NOT COMPETENT to help people." You are competent, honest and will help people, then join the insurance professional, lead by examples, promote strongly buy terms invest the rest, revolutionalise and help the poor people on the street who if they do not listen to you & company will get cheated by all the crapy agents! Don't be a NATO, don't be a coffee shop TCSS man, be a leader!

MR Tan, pardon me, but pray tell me, did you get your enlightenment only after you relinquish your power as the former CEO of NTUC Income? Otherwise you would have abolish all the participating plans & investment linked plans of NTUC, right? You would have told all the income agents to sell only term plans, and advise the people to invest the rest with the fund houses, right? I remember once you appear on the paper endorsing Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) then not long after you appear again, saying SRS is actually too complicated! So could you be saying buy term, invest the rest now, but one day (for whatever reasons) you may change this opinion of yours?

May I ask all the experts, esp zhummment, SKhim & MR Tan, assuming this guy is 45 now, & he is concern that should he contracts cancer at the good old age of 70, he wants some plans that would take care of the medical bills for cancer treatment and continue to provide him with monthly expenses for himself & his wife, and the medical bills & the monthly expenses should not be a burden to his children.; June 24, 2008 1:46 AM
Unknown said...: 10% of kidney function will need dialysis already cause she will be very tired cause not much blood is produced.Loss of appetite, breathlessness & super thirsty.

The fistula (vein in the arm) will have to be created for dialysis & that takes abt 2 mths to be used.; June 24, 2008 10:31 AM
siewkhim said...: Dear All,

Sorry to hear that our friend's mother has kidney problem.

Guys I think we can have different of opinions but refrain from attacking one another.

I agree with dragon all forms of insurance products have virtues and limitations. But what we are grieving about is when insurers at point of sales indicate superiority of their products but at the point of making benefit payments gave "all kind of actuarial excuses" not to pay as what we expected to be paid. That is, these insurers fail the test of satisfying "policyholders' reasonable expectation". To give a real example is NTUC Income. Annual bonus rates on their participating products were cut due because of deteriorating economic conditions and expected poor investment scenarios. But for the last 10 years their average yield is 7.8% per annum. They did restore the bonus cut. Instead they revise the existing bonus structure, cut the annual bonus further and replaced it with so called "special bonus" which is not guaranteed. As a result many of our participating policies are to earn less that 4% pa from their participating policies. Mr Tan's wife single premium participatinmg endownment earned 3.5%. Mr Tan's living policy is still below break even after 15 years of premium payments. My living policy earns less than 1% pa after paying premiums for 15 years.

That is why we are advocating buying term policies covering death/TPD, dread diseases (if necessary) hospitalisation, health insurance, accident, disability income, long term care etc. but not those participating policies that promise superior yield based on "projected sales illustrations" because these projected yields are not likely to be realised.; June 24, 2008 1:12 PM
zhummmeng said...: Drag on,
I excuse you.At first I thought you are an agent but on closer reading you are like many out there, consumers , who are still blur but have some superficial knowledge of insurance and thus making yourself easier victim of insurance salesmen.
Yes, every product has its limitation. The problem is a lot of agents are using them as "one size fits all", one with protection, saving, retirement and so forth . Worse, they bullshit you that your need for insurance is greatest when you are old . Yes, you are more prone to sickness, critical illness and death when you are old but your need is much reduced./To stay healthy is your insurance. In stead of recommending the RIGHT products at lowest cost to address old age problems the agents tell you wholelife and you should keep it till whole life.This is not effieceint and the man in the street can't afford. Do you know how expensive is whole life when you are old?
Another problem is a lot of people's personal finance is skewed towards wholelife insurance which is useless as a protection device and saving device.And having insurance in old age will not solve your financial problem, they only aggravate when you don't have need for it. Having more money is the answer.Why people have money no enough at old age it is because the agents screwed you up and loaded you up with wholelife and endowment which are the worse saving devices
when you were younger.
Another bullshit by agents is that wholelife gives discipline. CPF is most the most secured iron cladded saving scheme yet it can be broken into. When people have financial difficulty nothing is safe from them.Their mind is most creative at this time. All morals ,discipline, principles and whatever will be thrown into the Singapore river.
How to prevent all this? I always advocate that you MUST FIRST look for an HONEST AND COMPETENT adviser to plan for you and not an insurance salesman. This is the first step, a very important step.
You want to know where to get term plans that cover you for life? UOB and Axa have plans till 100 years old and NTUC till 80 years. I wonder they are enough long for you at low cost.
Do you know how much you pay for wholelife after you are 65 years old? How many claims by people after 65 years old?
I will address these issues next time.; June 24, 2008 6:32 PM
zhummmeng said...: Mr.Drag on,(re your case study)
I assume that this 45 year old person is a man, married, with children all of whom will be financially independent when he is 65 years old.
You say he is concerned about contracting CI at 70 years old. If he is very sure that it will happen at age 70 , meantime any CI coverage or insurance he has, ask him to throw them away and save the money to buy one huge sum assured term CI at age 69 and also a term death cover as legacy to this children in case death follows the illness..The proceed may fund his treatment, living expenses and the retirement of his wife for the rest of their life.This will be the biggest windfall for him and his family and with only a small outlay. (term insurance is cheap); June 24, 2008 11:31 PM
Unknown said...: Zhummmeng,

First there's no need to break my user name up into "drag on", cos it's very rude, childish, immature, only primary school boys do that (unless you are of a primary school boy mentality, then I pity you) & simply reflects your type of character, where I must have written something in you to prompt such a reaction ...

1) Are you sure he is insurable at age 69? You are obviously talking c**k! and is defending your worthless opinions for the sake of defending! you know, "blah blah blah"?

2) I dunno about your outdated info, but I only pay 20 years for my whole life that covers me for the rest of my life; so my premiums payment stop at age 55, and the value of my protection grows on & on, vested year to year. I need not go on & on & on paying like some of the plans you people have taken, mostly greedy for its cheaper premiums and better projected non-guaranteed surrender values. Don't bullshit you ain't taken in by these 2 factors, which when it fails to deliver, you moan and groan and become a bitter gourd.

3) Terms are cheap only when you are young and insurable, and most of these terms available in the market makes you renew every 5 years with increased premiums every 5 years, and by the time you reach 60s or 70s, the term premiums are higher than limited whole life term premiums you would have taken up 20 to 30 years ago.

4) Term premiums are not guaranteed, so that insurance companies can factor in the inflation, thus upon every renewal, especially on the 5 years, you could be paying more premiums than the table you were shown 10 or 20 years ago. You are most like paying present values of money for your term, whereas for whole life plans you would have been paying the same premiums you were paying 20 years ago!

5) You said one must FIRST find a HONEST & COMPETENT adviser to advise on insurance matters, may I know who could this person be? How do you judge whether he is HONEST & COMPETENT or is he also taking you for a ride? AND there are no FREE advises that are GOOD (cos the adviser also need to eat & feed his family right? Otherwise all good doctors and lawyers and politicians & CEOs should not be paid / charge so high!) under the sun! Even if it is true the advises are really good, genuine and free, you always go & bother him so you could save on advisory fees / commissions / premiums, you "buay pie say" meh?

6) Finally, I really hope the very competent and honest adviser you have mentioned is not yourself! or it surely is the biggest joke of the century!

Like I said, please stop being so self-opinionated. Be open minded, for others to listen to you, the litmus test is whether your children listens to you. Please, I am saying, """listen to you""", not take orders from you as their parents! Most parents would agree with me on this point.

Our parents used to tell us, in the past ah we dun have this, in the past ah, we dun have that .... I say, stop living in the past! Last time police wear shorts ah!

Our parents used to tell us, they eat salt more than we eat rice ... that's the problem, now they have all sorts of health problems!

So STOP trying to be an old fashion father or mother to the public, barking your opinions at the public.

Be open minded, your beliefs & methodologies may not be applicable to ALL!; June 25, 2008 5:51 PM
zhummmeng said...: Mr. Dragon,
the case study was provided by you and you mentioned the man's concern at age 70. I assumed that before that he would be very healthy ,insurable and if that was so I advised he could throw away any wholelife or limited premium insurance into the Singapore river to see how many fishes would be killed.
Dragging On, i wasn't talking cock when I said one could be insured at age 69, please check with your beloved insurance agents before spewing like c..k's backside.
Another point that you raised about paying up to 20 years and you stop paying thereafter... This is another "well kept secret" insurers and agents alike would not tell you.
Let me give you a clue so that you would not be that clueless after this about mortality charge. If your $100k sum assured ,20 year limited premium, the mortality charge for you at age 65 is about $3k and this is what you are paying without you knowing it and it increases with age.How? it is deducted from your cash value and your cash value gets lesser the longer you hold on to your policy.Now you know. That is why I call this a 'well kept secret". Please see your agent and demand from him or her why you were not told.
Another point is your protection value DOESN'T GROW but shrinking and you are paying the same premium. Another secret your bullshitting agent didn't tell you?
I won't reveal. Get your agent to find out. You can hantam me if i lie.

Did you find out from the companies that sell whole life term plans? Do you want to buy limited premium term plan?
Ah, you see, who is living in the police wear short era? Who is who?
My motto is shore up or ship out otherwise i have no business sharing basic stuff to complicated people.
BTW this is a short educational tour just tailored for you but don't drag on issues that you have no inkling about them.
I do agree with you that salt is not healthy. That is why a lot of people have blood pressure problem and if they read my posting their blood pressure will shoot up because ,not me, they would be wondering why the so called best friend insurance agent never told them about all this and worse they lied.
Another thing I agree is , it is hard, very hard to find an adviser with honesty and competence. You either have one honest but screwed up, blur, unqualified or you get one so competent but dishonest.Either one you die.
This is my 10000 cents worth ???.; June 25, 2008 7:26 PM
Thomas Phua's Blog said...: My mum is age 73, the difficult part is to stablise her.

Do you send her to SGH to wait for an appointment or to private hospital for faster attention?

Both will incur a cost and time. It will be quite a stress.

Insurance plan will cushion off such stress. Shield Plan is one plan that is essential.

What one needs in life, one has to decide himself.

Is a wholelife essential or is a Term cover good enough for such latter stage in life problem?

When one come to a real situation, then to know what is essential is probably a little too late.

I hope we can all be mature enough to look into our own needs.

Like it or not, we all will grow old one day.

One part of my own consideration is also that I do not want to be a burden to my next generation.

I can bear the burden of my mother now, but surely this will be an example for me, not to burden my children in the future, if I can be prepared for it now, for the future.; June 25, 2008 10:11 PM
siewkhim said...: Guys,

Come on, don't be like that. Can we refrain from attacking one another. Otherwise we may lose track of the targeted subject matter.

If we want to rebutt our friends let do it politely and cooly. In this way we learn from each other and to accept other point of views and still be friends.; June 26, 2008 12:42 AM
zhummmeng said...: Pardon me, if I have been indifferent to the anguish and suffering of a mother with kidney problem. I have no intention to aggravate the situation.
What I like you to understand is what I have been trying to establish and debunk some of the misconceptions of whole life insurance products. If people have understood the flaws and the shortcomings of wholelife products in its right perspectives the anguish of later years or old age could have been alleviated. I don't blame consumers for not understanding them. The blame should fall on the insurers and its greedy agents who have not considered the long term interest of their clients.
In my earlier posting i exposed some very material informations that consumers should have been told but never told. These are the shortcomings of wholelife and the shortcoming that have caused and forced policyholders to terminate them unwittingly.
I have done a research about claim and over the last 5 years data i have not found any claim from people at age 65 and beyond. This led me to conclude that people don't hold wholelife for whole life. This revelation enraged me that insurers and insurance agents have been unethically selling this argument that you need one at old age and which i revealed inearlier posting.
Another finding is claim from whole life policyholders is small and average about $35K from people around the median age of 45. The biggest claim i found is $200K and it was death claim from a term insurance and which might not be enough if this was the only one the deceased had. What can you conclude from these findings.
1.people don't hold WL for whole life
2. People have been short changed by insurance agents and WL products
3. People need a lot of insurance when they are bringing up their family
4. claim from whole life is small
and not enough to address needs.
5. people might have been sold the wrong insurance.
6 People need proper financial planning and looking at their needs from the big picture angle so that on one need is overly skewed at the expense of the other needs.
7. risk management is not about insurance alone; healthy lifestyle and diets are also insurance
8.self insurance by having a lot of money and setting aside money to address emergency needs now and at old age.
9. insurance is least efficient at old age.
10. insurance agent are NOT HONEST AND COMPETENT.
11. don't trust insurance agents.
12. don't trust yourself too
13. engage a professional and not a insurance salesman, competent and honest adviser with right qualifications like CFP to help you as coach, counselor and navigator; June 26, 2008 10:23 PM
cheerful said...: I did not read much in detail.All I'm interested in is that I share the same fact as the victim. I have kidney disease since I was 13 yrs old. Currently, I am 37 and my doctor told me recently that I will be on dialysis very very soon. I have no insurance of any kind too ! Financially, I am very worried too. I have a father who is on the run due to some business problem and the burden of taking care of my mother falls heavily on me. However, each time i am stressed with the question of money, my health gets worse and add moren to my burden. I have since know that it is better to LIVE HEALTHILY AND BRAVELY,so that every cent spent is justified. I just live each day as it comes. Don't worry too much.When things happen , we will just make it through.; March 22, 2009 12:06 AM

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Insurance for kidney failure patient

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