Time to stop an unnecessary and wasteful practice

My doctor prescribed medication to treat my medical condition. The clinic assistant asked me to pay $30. I said, "charge to my grandfather". She asked, "who is he?". I showed her my Pioneer Generation Card. She had a good laugh - hahaha.

But, I still have to pay $2. The remaining $28 is deducted from "my grandfather".

Why is there a need to pay the $2 and create extra work for the clinic assistant?

Perhaps, it was due to Mr. LKY. He did say that people should pay something, however small, so that they know that "nothing is for free".

But that was perhaps 40 years ago. Times have changed. Are these additional work really necessary? The cost of workers must have gone up 10 times. Why continue with this wasteful practice?

Does our current leaders know that Mr. LKY had since departed from this world? Did they not know that we had one week of national mourning for him? It is time for a change. 

Private website overcharges for the visa

I learned that visitors can apply for a tourist visit online to visit Myanmar. I searched for the website and found it. I entered the data needed for the application and was about to submit it. I checked the terms and conditions and learned that I had to pay a visa processing fee of US$120. That looked quite expensive.

I read the website more carefully and found that it was actually a private website and they are providing a service to apply for the visa. I abandoned the application.

My friend later found me the official website of the Myanmar Government. They charge a processing fee of US$50. The information required by the private website is the same as that needed by the official website.

The private website did not provide any value, but only added US$70 to the cost. They probably made their money from the public who were not aware of the over-charging. I nearly fell into their trap.

Complaints on poor quality of DBSS flats

I am surprised about the poor quality of workmanship for the DBSS housing projects. These are more expensive projects on HDB land but built by the private sector. The buyers have to pay a higher price for the flats.

DBSS is an acronym for Design, Build and Sell Scheme. Singaporeans, especially those in our elite political and government service, likes to create acronyms! It makes them feel great.

Are the workmanship really that bad, or is it due to higher expectation of the buyer. When paying a higher price, they will naturally expect better quality.

Perhaps the private developers went too far in trying to squeeze a high price and also to get the maximum sale-able space. In the process, the reduce the width of the corridors and open space. Maybe, they were trying to cut down cost also.

The complaints suggest that the DBSS scheme is a bad idea.

Read this article.

Many candidates for the US Presidential Election

13 high-profile Republicans have officially entered the campaign for the party's 2016 nomination. Only three major prospects remain: Ohio's Kasich, Wisconsin's Walker and New Jersey's Christie, each planning to announce his intentions in the coming weeks.

They are expected to join a field with five sitting or former senators, five current or former governors, two business leaders and a retired neurosurgeon. The "in or out" phase of the Republican presidential race is nearing its end, but with just over seven months until Iowa's leadoff caucuses, no clear leader has emerged in the race for the nomination.

There's so many candidates, it's almost impossible for the average person to keep track," said tea party leader Mark Meckler, who heads up the conservative group Citizens for Self-Governance.

Zurich Vista Plan

ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2012 (NOW RE-DATED)

Dear Mr. Tan,

As an expat in Singapore I signed up for Zurich's Vista Plan. Life in Singapore was good and I am very grateful for the hospitality and opportunity provided by the Singaporean Government. (My 2 kids are called Lee and Kuan, my wife's last name is Yu. That wasn't done on purpose, but in a way it does reflect our respect for the Minister Mentor.)

While liberal financial regulations have made Singapore what it is today, the top city to do business in, I feel that regulations aren't protecting end consumers as they should. MAS has brought some considerable improvement in this area, but does it go far enough?

As an example, I would like to call on all customers who regretfully have purchased a Zurich Vista investment plan.

I say regretfully, because for me it hasn't worked out. After several years of contribution, this is the score:

- on contributions of about us$ 200,000, Zurich has charged me us$20,000.-

- my gain has been around 4-5% per annum (which is good for Singapore, but standard in Australia)

- that gain is mostly due to the bonus which I was given at the beginning for signing up, this bonus effect will decline over the years

My main regret, besides the high cost, is regarding the terms and conditions that come into play when life changes and contributions to Zurich have to be paused.

Once I stopped making regular contributions, I found out that some of the charges simply continue and that stopping alltogether is costly, due to a steep surrender penalty. I am establishing if I have been mislead or ill-informed, or, whether it has been my own fault to buy into this product. 

My individual opinion - other people may have their own -  is that I bought 'flexibility', and that the fixed fee structure and high surrender penalties haven't been made clear enough. As a part of that process, if there are more customer like me, I am calling on them to see if we can take collective action:

Erik van Vulpen

Evanvulpen@yahoo.com

Australia

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Google analytics

I need help in installing Google Analytics for my blogspot. Any volunteer? Send email to kinlian@gmail.com

Insurance funds for infrastructure projects

China's State Council, which is the Chinese cabinet, has announced that an insurance investment fund will be set up, with capital mainly from insurance institutions to support strategic or public projects like urban renewal, infrastructure, water conservation, transportation, and international cooperation initiatives.

The decision, made on Wednesday, envisages that the insurance investment fund would total CNY300 billion (US$48.3 billion). It said that the fund would be managed along commercial lines to invest in such projects.

In recent years, the Chinese insurance industry has developed very rapidly. Total premium revenues exceeded CNY2 trillion last year and total assets stood at more than CNY10 trillion.

Read the article here.

MY VIEWS:
This is an excellent approach. It should be used for countries that need to develop their infrastructure, such as India (where PM Modi wants to develop 100 smart cities) and Indonesia (where President Joko Widodo wants to upgrade their infrastructure also).

Australia - proposal to half the upfront commission on life insurance policies

AUSTRALIA: The life insurance industry faces a shake-up -including a halving of commission rates- under proposals submitted by three major financial advisory associations to be implemented over a transitional period of three years. The proposals are welcomed by the government.


The reform package, from the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA), Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) and Financial Services Council (FSC), cuts the upfront commission rate on life insurance policies from 120% of premiums to 60% by 2018. On-going commissions will be limited to 20% of the annual premium from next January.

http://www.asiainsurancereview.com/News/View-NewsLetter-Article/id/33111/Type/eDaily?utm_source/Edaily-News-Letter/utm_medium/Group-Email/utm_campaign/Edaily-NewsLetter

Trading with technical analysis

Hi Mr. Tan
Do you encourage people to trade gold and commodities? Is it risky? I refer to this posting
http://tankinlian.blogspot.sg/…/how-to-trade-on-technical-a…

REPLY
I do not encourage people to trade - as it is similar to betting. In the long run, they will lose their money.

But many people like to take a bet. They call it investing, e.g. in gold or stocks, but in reality they are trading with the aim to make a profit in the short term.They should realize that it is easier to make a loss.

Some of them attend training courses and paid a few thousand dollars to learn the technical analysis, i.e. how to read the charts. It is a waste of time and money to attend these courses, as they will not produce the results that you look for. It takes a lot of practice and skills to be a good technical analyst.

I am suggesting an alternative approach. Let the experts make the technical analysis and follow their recommendations with a demo account. You will learn that apply the recommendations is also not easy. At least, the difficulty is reduced to some extent.

If you make a profit after trading with a demo account for a month, you can venture with real money. But you must remember:

1) Online websites allow you to trade with leverage. You are trading with 10 to 50 times of the money that you put in. At 50 times leverage, a 2% move against you will wipe out your entire capital.

2) Trade with money that you an afford to lose. It is like buying 4D. Do not think that you are investing.

Good luck.

Standard Life to close its Singapore operations

I was not aware that Standard Life has been operating in Singapore. Now they are shutting down their operations and writing off US$71 million in non-operating loss.

quote

Standard Life Plc is shutting its insurance division in Singapore, as the Edinburgh-based company moves its focus toward asset management.

Standard Life will incur a non-operating loss of about 45 million pounds ($71 million) from the closing, the company said in a statement on Thursday. The loss will be reported within half-year results on Aug. 4. along with a gain from the sale of its Canadian unit of about 1.1 billion pounds, it said.

The shutdown is “subject to regulatory approvals, and the business will no longer accept new applications or contributions to existing plans with immediate effect,” Standard Life said.


Scotland’s largest insurer named the head of its fund management unit, Keith Skeoch, chief executive officer last week as the company cuts back operations that require more capital. It sold its Canadian division to Manulife Financial Corp. for 2.2 billion pounds in 2014 and bought Ignis Asset Management Ltd. in March 2014, helping boost assets and fee-based revenue.

unquote

Difficult to train unskilled workers in a short time

Ministry of Manpower is taking action against the Accredited Training Providers for failing to maintain the standard in conducting the training and assessment of the workers that are being trained.

Read this article. 

The comments posted in the website suggest that the problem has been around for a long time, and that the Ministry and its officials have not been doing their job well.

I suspect that the problem is more deep rooted. We are allowing many unskilled workers to work in Singapore at low wages (and high levies paid to the government). Being unskilled, they do not have the language competence and the ability to learn the skills and knowledge.

The providers are probably under pressure to pass a quota of trainees, so they relaxed on their standards. Basically, the root cause is the type of people being allowed to work in the construction industry in Singapore.

It takes years to acquire the skills. It cannot be achieved with a crash course. I suspect that this is the root cause of the problem.

Unfortunately, this is the consequence of the contracting and tendering system that has been adopted for decades in Singapore and the reliance on low cost foreign workers. It does not give the prospects for local construction workers to stay long in the industry to develop the skills.

Take constructive actions against criminal hackers

The IDA has warned the public about the fraudulent phishing emails. These are sent out by criminal hackers to get the user ID and password of their victims. Read this article.

Is this all the IDA can do? It should be possible to trace the database of the hackers and bring criminal charges against them. If the hackers are located overseas, our authority could approach Interpol (the international police organization) to seek the cooperation of the countries where the criminals operate from.

It is important for the authority to take constructive action against these criminals, rather than sit back and "warn the public".

High vacancy rate among condos

According to this survey, most condos are darker at night now compared to a year earlier. This could mean that there is a higher vacancy rate among the condos or that the units are leased to tenants who travel more outside of Singapore.

More units are completed in recent months and the owners have not moved into the condos yet, or have difficulty in leasing out the units. The vacancy rate has increased.

So far, the owners are not under much pressure to dispose or lease their units, as interest rate remains low and they can fund their mortgage payments from past savings. But the situation will get more desperate if the vacancy rate remains high for a year or so.

Read this article.

How to trade on technical analysis

Some people spend a lot of money to attend training courses on technical analysis. They tried to apply the techniques to read the price charts. But it is difficult to read the charts correctly, unless you have many years of practical experience and you do the technically analysis regularly.

I have found a better way to trade on technical analysis. I follow the technical view of a specific analyst regularly and compare them with the actual price performance for the day. You can use a "demo account" to trade and see if you have made the right decisions following the recommendation of the technical analyst. 

The "demo account" is provided by many online stockbrokers. I prefer the one provided by Plus 500 which is available on iPad. 

For the technical analysis, I receive a daily emaily from Philips Securities. Currently, I am following only one trading item - Gold. 

An example of this chart is shown below. It tells me to take a short position in Gold when it is below 1180 and to cover the position when it goes above this level. I have found that the recommendation is reliable on many occasions.

Good luck on your trading. Remember to use the "demo account" to acquire your trading experience.

Benefits to be provided free to citizens

When a person join a club as a member, he or she has to pay a monthly or annual subscription and will be entitled to the benefits provided by the club. They may include free use of certain facilities of the club and to pay a reduced fee for the use of other facilities or to dine at the restaurant.

The same concept can be applied when a person becomes a citizen of Singapore. The citizen and his family is entitled to the use of certain public services free and to other services at a reduced rate or at cost. There is a need to prevent abuse of some free benefits by over consumption of the benefits. To prevent his abuse, a charge may be imposed.

Some services cannot be over consumed, for example, security, basic education or medical consultation. Most people will only use them out of necessity, rather than for "enjoyment". There is no need to charge for the use of these public services.

It does not make sense for the government to charge a fee for basic education. It is costly and unproductive to collect the small amount of fee from the students and to take action against poor students who are not able to pay the fee. The collection of the fees takes the time of the teachers which adds to their stress and work load.

Similarly, it is not necessary to collect fee for essential medical consultation. As the government already pays for a large part of the cost of these services, it is unproductive and wasteful to add to the cost by asking the patient to make a small payment. There are better ways to prevent the abuse, for example, by asking the patient to pay in full for the use of services in excess of a quota. As most people will use the services within the quota, it will reduce the administrative work of collecting the small fee. It also saves time of the patients in queuing to pay the fee.

Beyond the free services, there is a need for the government to charge for the use of other services which are discretionary and considered as non essential. The government can provide these services and give the benefit to the citizens of lower cost through bulk purchase of the services and control on over charging. The services that fall within this category include tertiary education and specialist health care.

The government can provide this services to a certain proportion (for example, 50 percent) of the total demand and allow the private sector to meet the rest of the demand. The citizens are willing to pay a higher price in the private sector to have shorter waiting time or better service. The prices set by the government for similar services will be useful to serve as a benchmark on the prices set in the private sector.

The current system used in Singapore of providing different levels of subsidies for the consumption of health services according to the income level of the family is troublesome and inefficient. A better way is to provide a direct monthly grant to people at the lower income level to be credited into a stored value card or restricted or open bank account.  The holder can use the money from the government to pay for the use of services at the normal charges applicable to citizens.







  

Three wishes to improve our health care system

I asked a friend, who has been a general practitioner for 35 years - if a genie appear and is willing to grant you three wishes to improve the health care system in Singapore for the benefit of the people, what would you wish for?

He thought about this for a minute and replied:

a) The first wish to the government should open pharmacies all over Singapore and provide drugs at the subsidized prices that are now available to patients who visit the government polyclinics and hospitals. This will bring down the cost of drugs significantly and reduce the health care cost for the people.

b) The second wish is to pay the doctors a fixed fee to take care of the patients, e.g. $1,000 a year for each patient who are chronically ill and a lower rate for the younger and healthier patients. (This will not include drugs, which have to be paid separately at the government pharmacies). This is called the "capitation system". The doctors do not make more money by getting the patients to see them many times. As they get the same amount, they will spend time to teach the patient to stay healthy and visit them less often.

c) The third wish is to get rid of the complicated subsidy scheme that is now the practice in Singapore. This is taking too much time for the doctors and their staff in computing what has to be paid by different types of patients and the time spent trying to game the system.

I remark that the first two wishes are what has been the practice in the United Kingdom for several decades. While that system has its faults, it is generally regarded as being good for the people.

On the third wish, it is something that is unique to Singapore. It is wasteful, confusing and add to the cost.

My friend will make a better minister for health than the current minister. He knows what the actual problems are on the ground better than someone who flew in by helicopter.

Growth in the foot

This is a famous foot with a growth.  My private doctor said there were two possibilities.
a) It is a tophus and is caused by gout attacks
b) there is a growth in the bone of the foot - but it is benign.

To find out what caused it, I visited the polyclinic for the first time in my life. I had to join 6 queues over 3 hours and only saw the doctor for 10 minutes. I now know why Singaporeans loved the time spent in queues - especially if they can take the time off from their work.

The polyclinic took an X-ray of my foot. The doctor studied the image and reported that is is most likely a tophus. I will be visiting a specialist in the hospital to see if they can remove the projection.

Foreign workers get better health care

The government charges higher rates for permanent residents and foreigners using the public health services. Some of the charges are higher than the charges by private doctors and hospitals. So, the foreigners have to visit the private doctors.

But the foreigners are working in Singapore and their medical bills are paid by their employers directly or through their company insurance.

What is the final result? Foreign workers are attended by private doctors and citizens have to waste a lot of time at the public clinics. This is ironic! But it is what happens in Singapore. What a short sighted government!

Too many queues in polyclinic

I have a growth in my foot. My private doctor said that an X-ray is needed to determine the cause. He suggested that I go to the polyclinic to see if they can do the X-ray and identify the problem, in case surgery is needed,

I visited a polyclinic today for the first time in my life. I searched Google and found their opening time to be 8 am. I arrived at 830 am. The waiting area was more than half occupied. I got a queue number. I asked the staff how long is the waiting time for registration. I got the typical answer -don't know. She follows the usual habit  -how to avoid responsibility.

I observed that it takes 3 minutes to register a patient. There were 15 patients ahead of me. It should take 45 minutes to be registered. What is the point of attending a world class school system when the staff cannot make this estimate?

That was the first queue. I have to wait in a total of 6 queues to complete the visit:

1) To register
2) Wait for the doctor - kept in the dark on how long to wait or which room to enter
3) Wait for the X ray
4) Wait to see the doctor after the X ray
5) To register an appointment to visit the hospital - they still can't give me a date, as the hospital will call me back
6) To pay the bill.

The total visit took 3 hours, with 80% of the time spent in the 6 queues. Now, I now why Singaporeans love to queue!

But, they do provide comfortable seats. I could spend the time reading content from my iPad. And, if I were a worker, the wasted time will be on the employer's account. 

Now you know why it is so costly to run a business in Singapore!