Comment: The help for disability costs is welcome, but allowing the withdrawal of Medisave may not benefit all



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SINGAPORE: What will you live on if you have a severe disability?

A national insurance plan, CareShield Life, will be launched from 2020. You pay premiums and in return you receive lifetime benefits if you are assessed to be severely disabled. Premiums for CareShield Life may be paid by Medisave

Former Singaporeans already on ElderShield will be encouraged to switch to CareShield Life, with cash incentives, if they enroll in both Years of 2021.

Singaporeans will be allowed to withdraw monthly money at Medisave for their severe disability needs. Those who still need help for severe disability costs may be eligible for help from a newly created Elder Fund.

GOVERNMENT AS A COUNTER-INTERVENTION

This seems to correspond to the structure of the 3M system (Medisave, Medishield Life, MediFund) in health care. In this system, the government is trying to establish shared responsibilities for paying for health care, in line with its approach of first involving individuals, then families, and then government as a support.

Medisave Individual Savings Imposed and may be used to pay for approved purposes, including drugs for chronic diseases, health and insurance of health care. the elderly. It can also be used to pay for hospitalization expenses in the deductible and co-insurance sections of the MediShield Life coverage.

Families can reload Medisave from a family member or help pay for their medical expenses directly.

MediShield Life primarily intended to cover catastrophic illnesses and the resulting large hospital bills. Individuals will initially pay in cash or from Medisave before claiming from MediShield Life

Finally, MediFund will help those who can not afford to pay for health care, assessed on a case-by-case basis. case.

modeled severe disability care on this system. But severe disability support, as defined by the inability to conduct three of six activities of daily living (ADL), is much simpler and can be handled in a slightly different way.

  a wheelchair. (File: TODAY & # 39; HUI) </figcaption></figure>
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<p><strong>  THE CASE OF CARESHIELD </strong> </p>
<p>  CareShield Life, like MediShield Life, is an insurance plan. Like all insurance plans, it is a risk sharing system. A simplified illustration of risk-sharing versus individual risk is: </p>
<p>  Take, for example, 20 people in a population. Half will be disabled for different durations before disappearing. One person may be disabled for one year before dying, but another may be disabled for 12 years. </p>
<p>  If the monthly subsidized nursing fee is $ 1000 a month, the lifetime disability costs range from $ 0 for the non-disabled to $ 144,000. those who live 12 years after a disability. </p>
<p>  This can be scary because you do not know who will be disabled and for how long. It is an individual risk without insurance. </p>
<p>  What would happen if each of the 20 people paid Singapore $ 8,000 in a mutual fund that promises to pay $ 600 a month for life if you are disabled? In this way, everyone is assured that a portion of their disability costs is covered regardless of your disability status or your life span, at the expense of a lump sum payment. initial. </p>
<p>  Risk Sharing is about converting all or part of a READING: Strengthening our Disability Management System, a Commentary </h3>
<h3>  READ: Registration for Severe Disability Plan at 30 years old should be a sobering news, a comment </h3>
<p><strong>  WITH UNFAVORABLE SELECTION, MORAL DANGER </strong> </p>
<p>  In insurance, there is the question of anti-selection. If insurance is not mandatory, you may feel like you are in good health and not be affected by a disability. Or maybe you are rich enough so that the disability costs are not a concern. </p>
<p>  Insurance does not get your premium and costs increase for those who are still there. </p>
<p>  One way to fix this is to make premiums mandatory like CareShield Life. </p>
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  healthcare in singapore 1 [19659016] A hospital in Singapore </figcaption></figure>
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<p>  Another problem is moral hazard. This is the best known case in the field of health insurance, where zero co-payment systems may have led medical institutions to prescribe too much and people to consume too many services. This results in higher premium costs for others who make moderate claims, or for insurers who suffer losses. </p>
<p>  This is less of a problem with CareShield Life, where the claim criteria are simplified three out of six, and the payment is in </p>
<p>  <strong> CARESHIELD LIFE VERSUS MEDISAVE WITHDRAWALS </strong> </p>
<p>  CareShield Life Can Be considered as a kind of collective savings. Each participant contributes to a fund pool. The fund accumulates interest, and individuals can withdraw from it when they are affected by the insured event. </p>
<p>  It offers the most economical way to partially meet the severe needs of the population and share them, after mitigating both selection and moral hazard. </p>
<p>  Although it avoids intergenerational funding, it involves intragenerational funding – within a cohort of older, healthier people, who do not claim as much, effectively help people less healthy. </p>
<p>  The government now claims that Medisave can be removed for severe disability needs. Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said it would give people more flexibility because it is cash and avoids an intergenerational subsidy, where young taxpayers pay for health care. 39, an older generation, for example through subsidized nursing care. 19659002] But that is also what CareShield Life does. It gives money and avoids an intergenerational grant. </p>
<p>  When you run out of individual savings, including in your Medisave, you may need to consider applying for ElderFund or MediFund, without certainty of disbursement. Uncertainty can cause anxiety. </p>
<p>  When you share the risk with others with CareShield Life, you reduce this uncertainty of the amount for which you are insured. Low-income people and the middle class, in particular, should welcome the reduction in the uncertainty surrounding the coverage of elderly care. Reducing anxiety about costs is something to be desired. </p>
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  FILE PHOTO - An electronic patient card is displayed on the wall at a hospital room in San Diego, Cal

FILE PHOTO – An electronic patient chart is displayed on the wall in a room of hospital in San Diego, California on April 17, 2017. REUTERS / Mike Blake

MORE PAYMENTS FROM CARESHIELD INSTEAD

Medisave when they are disabled, why not commit additional funds of Medisave, while most are still in the prime of life, to additional CareShield Life premiums to get higher payments instead?

The sharing element of CareShield is to be desired. for people with low incomes, as it offers greater certainty about a potentially catastrophic end-of-life event. Better-off individuals have more alternatives on how to deal with this event.

Individuals with low or precarious incomes, who would have difficulty getting a steady stream of additional bonuses, will probably find it difficult to find sufficient Medisave balances to overcome them. any future serious disability and would then need help. The ability to withdraw from Medisave would be of little use

The government should rather help them with bonuses now rather than later.

3M Health Care System Essentially Allocates Responsibility for Health Care Among Individuals, Family, By Adopting a Similar System of Severe Handicap with Its Slightly Different Characteristics, the Government Can Change It to Increase Sharing Responsibility intragenerational system and simplify this new health care system.

Tan Jin Meng graduated from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and is interested in social policy and economics

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