Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Health Subsidy for Singapore citizens

There was a recent case where a Singaporean was denied the subsidy on health care due to an industrial accident. The citizen was not covered by the employer for the accident. The Ministry of Health decided to charge the full rate to the citizen.

I am puzzled by this decision. It seemed that one ministry (i.e. Health) wishes to push the push the problem to another ministry (i.e Manpower) by requiring that the cost should be borne by the employer as it is an industrial accident. The Ministry of Manpower will find it difficult to enforce this requirement, especially for small employers. If the employer is unable to cover this cost, the burden falls on the poor citizen.

It is better for Singapore to have one system to provide for medical expenses, rather than a fragmented system with separate rules for for industrial and non-industrial accidents. We seem to have a culture of pushing responsibility from one ministry to another. Instead of finding ways to reduce cost for the nation, it seems that our civil servants are spending time to find out where to pass the buck. Can someone remind our ministers that they they belong to one Government?

Read this article by Leong Sze Hian in TheOnlineCitizen.

Tan Kin Lian
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2 comments:

Spur said...

Becoz of this case, ordinary citizens now know that there is a rule stating that you don't get any medical subsidy if injury or sickness caused by "industrial accident". Even if you stay in C Class ward, you still pay A Class prices. I'm not sure if this is a recent rule, or has been there since policeman wear shorts.

Under Workman Compensation, a company is liable to foot an employee's medical bills only up to $25,000. In this real life case, the total bill was almost $150K. Even after the $25K company payment + Medishield + wiping out his Medisave, he still owe $50K.

Some insurance agents using this story to hardsell Shield plans covering private hospitals or at least A Class wards. But not everybody can afford such expensive Shield plans, especially at older age. And it is fundamentally a very sick way to offer medical coverage to the average Joes.

So far I'm surprised no MP has specifically bang-table on this particular issue and get parliament to review this ruling, which may be reasonable 40 years ago when you can have major hospital operation for $30, but definitely not reasonable today.

March 02, 2011 2:01 PM
Lye Khuen Way said...

I need someone to correct me, but it appeared long-long ago, all new Acts were tabled by the Law Minister of the day. Mr E Barker ?
Nowadays, it has been de-centralised. Sounds reasonable, except that Out-of-Singapore disputes do come by once in a while. Then again, we have had the service of Prof Tommy Koh, whom I thought was like a very good lawyer on retainer.

The current situation could well explain why we have so many tai-chi masters.

March 02, 2011 9:48 PM

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