This letter has been published with some changes made by the Editor.
26 August 2012
26 August 2012
Editor, Forum Page
Straits Times
I refer to the letters from Jerry Lam and Phillip Williams regarding
their health insurance policies (Straits Times 24 August 2012).
More Singaporeans are relying on insurance to take care of the
escalating cost of health care, especially for the elderly.
I urge the Monetary Authority of
Singapore and the insurance associations to clarify the uncertainties
faced by consumers when they are faced with
stiff renewal terms, changes to the existing coverage, and
exclusions for pre-existing conditions.
Consumers need to be assured that their
rights and interests are protected, and that they do not have to incur
legal expenses to overcome unreasonable rejection of their claims.
It is also important for consumers to realize that insurance is not the only solution.
They should consider other risk management methods, such as loss control
and retention of risk.
This should not rely on insurance to pay for expensive and futile treatment
that have an extremely low chance of success and does not improve
the quality of life.
Tan Kin Lian
President
Financial Services Consumer Association
Financial Services Consumer Association
9 comments:
Well said! Presently, many policyholders are in the dark and many are ignorant till the point of making a claim. I am one of those who try to enquire but was given the run around with no peace of mind for years. Junior staff do not know the answers and senior staff are too important to talk with me. It is thus heartening to know that there is someone who really cares for the common man and his interests. Kudos to you Mr. Tan
All Insurance companies are the same, they engage in pretence, and make things murky for easy manipulation, each having their own rules.
For Income Shield policyholders, we are told, better inform NTUC Income even before you enter hospital.
For Great Eastern, you have to quickly enter hospital first for treatment, and if surgery required, then easier to claim.
What a confusing and corked up system we have, our Regulator, MAS, really have the easiest job in the world, everything is emptor caveat on consumers.
Taxpayers are taken for a ride, paying them such high pay, for doing so much less work, as compared to other countries' Regulators.
I am not too sure about asking the Insurance association to clarify.
Sure, they will pacify but health insurance is one categaory of insurance that keeps on 'mutating', with premiums increasing after each and every additional 'mutation'. And such changes are more common than rare. We must also understand who the association represents. I also never trust such organisations that purport to look after consumer's interest, but are often just toothless and mere white elephants
As for the MAS, you know what they will say, having gone through the Lehman Brothers/High Notes saga and it's after effects. They will tell you to open your eyes when buying and just close your eyes and pray thereater.
Now the insurance agents , the managers and the companies are ganging up to twist the arms of the regulator using invalid and untenable reasons to support their case.
Can MAS be threatened into yielding to them?
It depends on whose side is MAS, the consumers or the conmen, conwomen and robbers.
It would be very interesting to see how MAS behaves.
MAS should follow the Indian regulator and treat these threats as noises. India sacrificed 500 FA companies to clean up the industry. Is sacrificing 10,000 incompetent and not qualified insurance salesmen agents a big deal?
No!.....it is too populated compared to Australia with 18000 agents to 28 million people.Singapore has 30,000 salesmen(15000 agents and others in the banks) with a 5 million people, isn't Singapore too populated with insurance salesmen?
Why Singapore has so many insurance salesmen? Truth is they all see the industry as a get rich quick industry like MLM. You get tom dick harry and ah lians and ah beng, the good , the bad and ugly with one common purpose....to get rich quick using the mouth and pushing products anyhow..Helping the consumers to plan their finances is very far off their mind and few only know. So? MAS should get rid of these blood suckers and stop them from making the consumers as their cash cows.
The Practitioner
Reply to "The Practitioner".
Please be restraint in your use of words. You have good points, but I will have to remove your post, if it is rude. Are you able to edit it?
My preference is that the standard terms and coverage of an insurance policy should be approved by the authority. This includes the conditions on renewal, change of terms and exclusions on pre-existing illnesses.
They cannot be left to be described and interpreted by each insurance company according to its choice. There must be some acceptable standards in the industry.
We can have the choice of a standard product and a high end product, but the terms and conditions should be scrutinised by the regulators and should be made clear to consumers.
Right now, we have about 30 different health insurance products and they are differ from one product to another and one company to another. And the underwriting and renewal practices are also uncertain.
One of the way togo is capping yearly claims limit for medical insurance. The MOH should not have recommend the recent increase of claims limit from $200k to$300k? This increase means hurting the insurers' base and hence future premiums of all insured. This is unfair to insured who has no-claims since entering the shield programme. Rising medical cost should not meant increasing the claims limit but addressing other cost factors like productivity in health care.
This FACTs is also true, NTUC INCOME claim to have her rights and had modify our contract to alter her obligations and claim compensation after inception of policy and the INCEPTION OF CLAIM had been effective . NTUC Income claim that her policy give her the rights to stop her obligations and thus send us a claim recovery. NTUC INCOME had also trying to deny the renewal even after they had bank in our cheque of premium payment.
NTUC INCOME branded under social enterprise and the above act gives a false sense of complacency of the insurance policy the public can always rely on.
Media Healthcare Insurance Scheme !? Give false sense of reliance where the basic fundamental essence and spirits of scheme can be modify or deny down the road. There is an urgent need to further address the details in order to bring real benefit to the people.
To elaborate: once single-payer is implemented, health care costs the government .... Let me try again, just in case this helps to clarify:
health insurance in SW
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