Who Moved My Singapore Cheese

After talking to a friend who doubted that our medical care system in Singapore is indeed possibly leaving some fellow citizens in the lurches without a voice, them being minority, I decided to finally dig a bit deeper into what is covered by our medishield and what is not, and you can deduce from there, why some families have to sell their HDB to keep a loved one alive.

This is the link to the List of Excluded Treatments and Medical Expenses for Medishield


List of Excluded Treatments & Medical Expenses
Generally, the following expenses are outside the scope of MediShield and cannot be
claimed:
 Entire stay in hospital if the member was admitted to the hospital before he was
insured by MediShield
 Treatment of any of the following categories of pre-existing illnesses or any other
serious illnesses for which the patient had received medical treatment during the 12
months before the start of MediShield cover:
o Blood disorder
o Cancer
o Cerebrovascular accidents (stroke)
o Chronic liver cirrhosis
o Chronic obstructive lung disease
o Chronic renal disease, including renal failure
o Coronary artery disease
o Degenerative disease
o Ischaemic heart disease
o Rheumatic heart disease
o Systemic lupus erythematosus
 Ambulance fees
 Congenital anomalies, hereditary conditions and disorders e.g. hole-in-heart, hare-lip
 Cosmetic Surgery
 Maternity charges (including Caesarean operations) or abortions
 Dental work (except due to accidental injuries)
 Infertility, sub-fertility, assisted conception or any contraceptive operation
 Sex change operations
 Mental illness and personality disorders
 Optional items which are outside the scope of treatment
 Overseas medical treatment
 Private nursing charges
 Purchase of kidney dialysis machines, iron- lung and other special appliances
 Treatment for which the insured person received reimbursement from Workmen's
Compensation and other forms of insurance coverage
 Treatment of any illness, disability, injury or any condition arising from or due to the
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) virus
 Treatment for drug addiction or alcoholism
 Treatment of injuries arising directly or indirectly from nuclear fallout, war and related
risk
 Treatment of injuries arising from direct participation in civil commotion, riot or strike
 Treatment of self-inflicted injuries or injuries resulting from attempted suicide
 Vaccination

And here are the list of Medishield benefits (I cannot really copy and paste this so please just follow the link)

For observational purposes and no other intent, note that our parents are not covered once they reach 85. So in a few yrs time when many more of our parents are older than 85 and fall sick, such as dementia or wadever that plagues the old, then what happens? Nursing home too expensive for us then what? Send them to Malaysia's nursing home as some MP suggested? Or do we quit our jobs to take care of them at home and earn no income to feed the young? Mister Lee Kuan Yew is 86 this year. Does that make him not worthy of our help? If he were not as rich as he is, and if his sons were not as rich as they are, then god bless his health because if he were to require a costly treatment right now, they could be bankrupted for all you and I care because that's the age we, as a society, collectively decided to be the age where we no longer need coverage, or is ok to "just die lor".

Maybe some of you heard about the Medifund, our so called last resort. Yay! We can go to Medifund, no problemo. Teennnghhh!. Wrong. You can go to Medifund ONLY when you have exhausted all your alternatives. See Link. Do you know when you can go to Medifund? When you have become an INDIGENT Singaporean. Phwoa, I never even knew what that word INDIGENT meant until I got to know Medifund. According to Dictionary.com it means to be: lacking food, clothing, and other necessities of life because of poverty; needy; poor; impoverished. Wonder why a simpler word that's more commonly understood couldn't have been used...like "destitute" or "bloody pathetic"...heh.

If we really want to go seek out the many other loopholes in our system and Singaporean families who have already been left out of the system when catastrophy hit them, we'll probably find that most of us wouldn't want to be them in our worst nightmares....but until that day comes and, oh, by then it'll be either too late or we'll be too caught up to make even a whimper, we'll just continue to live the "I'm ok right now, I don't care what else is happening to others" Singaporean "dream". Nothing wrong with status quo. It's the same as saying, to hell with minimum wage, to hell with public outcry (by the way you are not covered by medishield if you incurred it during a civil commotion lest you did not read through the caveats above).

So let us all fly the flag proudly again this August.

Happy 44th Singapore.