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Many of us believe that there is no need to carry our own personal medical insurance when we have an Employee Medical Insurance / Employee benefit plan through our employer. Then we might be in for a big surprise.
We all believe, our existing employee medical insurance benefit offers through our employer is sufficient to provide us with the coverage we need in the event if we are hospitalise due to an illness or an accident. But the truth is, there is always a limitation for an employee medical insurance programme.
All employers who participate in employee benefit programme will have to exercise cost containment, as such there will be limitation to its programme in term of coverage, such as co-payment, restriction on surgical limits, no dependent coverage etc. However, employer who offers such employee benefits is doing it for the welfare of the employees, because there are many companies who do not offer it all.
Now let us see how we can better understand our medical plan and choose the plan that is right for our family and us.
In general this is how we plan our medical insurance
We should see five layers of protections when comes to Healthcare and medical insurance programme.
Employee medical insurance
The first layer of medical coverage. This programme should provide covers for the following areas, but do note that not all employer will take up the full benefits
- Term life
- Personal accidental death and dismembermen
- Hospitalisation & Surgical benefit
- Outpatient Clinical benefit
- Outpatient Specialist benefit
Shield Plan / Personal medical insurance
These are plan offers by Private Insurance Companies, which you use your Medisave to pay for the shield plan while using cash to pay for the personal medical insurance plan. Such shield plan is design with co-insurance and deductible so to maintain the premium at a more affordable and cost effect level for the people. Most insurance companies, allow top up in cash to include a rider program to take care of the co-insurance and deductable.
Shield plans can complement our employee benefit in the event if our employee benefit is not sufficient to covers all the hospitalisation expenses, we can fall back to our shield plan to take care of the balance.
As for our personal medical insurance, we can consider to provide coverage for our Specialist Outpatient insurance, such as MRI, CT Scan, Diagnostic & Laboratory services and Prescribed Outpatient Therapy by Physiotherapist etc.
Dread diseases / Critical illness Insurance
Dread diseases / Critical illness Insurance are design to pay out a lump sum in the event if we are being diagnose with a major illness as stated in the policy. In most cases, we will be temporary incapacitated and may need time to recover. During this period we may not have an income, so we can dependent on this sum of money for our day to day expenses.
Medisave
This is a saving set aside to pay for our medical cost which is approved under the Medisave scheme, however, do we really want to deplete our Medisave saving if we have a reasonably comprehensive employee benefits and shield insurance?
Cash
CASH is KING?
Well it might be true but some expert is also saying that cash on hand is negative investment return. More importantly, our hard earned cash and saving can be wipe out overnight if we do not have a proper medical insurance in place.
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