Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Low income people and Medishield

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Low income people and Medishield

A Shin Min journalist asked me to comment on a survey finding that many low income and elderly people do not have adequate health insurance, and that they distrust insurance agents.

My comments are:
1. The low income and elderly persons should be insured under Medishield, which is low cost and can be paid from Medisave.
2. They should be treated in subsidised B2 or C wards to avoid large medical bills.
3. They do not need to buy additional medical insurance or to have unnecessary, duplicate cover
4. The government should open a window period for the uninsured persons to be accepted into Medishield now, without the need for health declaration.

For those who distrust insurance agents due to bad personal experience, they should read my book, Practical Guide on Financial Planning to be educated about health and life insurance, or should attend the educational talk organised by FISCA.

I suggested to the Shin Ming journalist to translate topics from my book into Chinese and print it in a series in their newspaper.

Tan Kin Lian

9 comments:

Anonymous said...: Shin Ming should let you write the column on life insurance and investment or a review of existing policies of their readers.; July 03, 2010 6:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Shin Ming should alert its readers about the rogue insurance agents and their modus operandi.
It should tell its readers to be wary of these agents who have so called logo of success like mdrt , cot or tot in their name card.It may be some kind of success but definitely success in conmanship.; July 03, 2010 7:25 PM
Anonymous said...: Shin Ming will do good deed to tell MAS the Public is displeased and have been conned by some of these bad insurance policies. MAS is not doing their work in protecting the interest of common people in allowing such one-sided insurance policies to be introduced in the first place.; July 03, 2010 11:25 PM
Anonymous said...: Talk about MAS my blood boils.; July 04, 2010 9:50 AM
Anonymous said...: MAS; according to my Malay Friends stands for 'Mana ada sistem'.

So, if MAS makes Singaporeans bloods boil, it's quite usual, at worse it could cause some to vomit bloods and suffer heart attacks.

Nevertheless, it is very much an Authority, no matter how ineffective it is.

patriot; July 04, 2010 11:19 AM
Anonymous said...: It's true that some low-income elderly do not have Medishield. Medishield is quite expensive for the elderly. For example, I paid for my mum's Medishield which is over 3 hundreds per year. Without help from children, some low-income elderly might decide to drop it. Incomeshield can run up to a few thousand dollar for the elderly.; July 04, 2010 6:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Mr.Tan
When you said "I suggested to the Shin Ming journalist to translate topics from my book into Chinese and print it in a series in their newspaper."
Later on you will conviently have a book in Chinese version right?
So clever.

James; July 04, 2010 10:38 PM
Anonymous said...: Authority or not, we are cursing MAS daily, God will do justice to all those people soonner than they thought.; July 05, 2010 1:14 PM
Anonymous said...: Someone should bring this up to the finance minister. This can be included into the budget speech for next year.; July 05, 2010 1:35 PM