A thoughtful piece. get well soon Roy...This got me thinking. In Hong Kong, for every visit to the hospital, a citizen would need to pay only a maximum of $20. In Norway, a citizen would only need to pay a cap of about $400 in a year. The system in these countries give you a peace of mind, where you know that you can still seek medical help if you need to, no matter whether you are rich or poor. You do not need to fear that costs can grow uncontrollably. However, in Singapore, there is no cap or maximum amount that Singaporeans need to pay. It was revealed that there have been people who had to pay more than $10,000 for their medical bills, or even $20,000. How on earth were they able to get that sort of money? In Singapore, the average a cleaner earns is $850. A research has shown that for the poorest 30% of households in Singapore, they have to spend 105% to 151% of their incomes. This means that low-income Singaporeans would never be able to save for their whole lives. Where would they be able to have the savings to pay for their medical bills? I had asked a financial adviser before as to whether low-income Singaporeans would be able to buy insurance. He shared with me that they would either buy the most basic of insurance to cover any work-related accidents, or that they would not be able to afford insurance. This means that they wouldn’t be able to have any additional medical coverage. There is Medisave and MediShield, but of total health expenditure, Medisave only covers for 5.5% and MediShield covers for only 2.1%. The government might champion Medishield as being universal but when it covers only 2%, this is hardly universal and hardly adequate. Today, Singaporeans have contributed $66 billion into Medisave but last year, we could only use 6% of this. Worker’s Party’s Gerald Giam had also revealed that Singaporeans had paid nearly $4 billion into MediShield premiums but are only able to claim back $2 billion in claims.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 14:22:51 +0000
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