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MediSave to pay for higher MediShield Life premiums as Govt expands national health insurance coverage

2024-03-06 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-新加坡原网页

SINGAPORE – Premiums for Singaporeans’ basic health insurance plan look set to increase, as MediShield Life is made to work harder, provide more assurance against large medical bills, and pay for new ground-breaking treatments.

Recommendations by an expert panel on the review of the scheme are expected by the second half of 2024, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung during the debate on his ministry’s budget on March 6.

MediShield Life is a basic, mandatory health insurance plan launched in November 2015 to protect all Singaporeans against large medical bills for life, regardless of pre-existing conditions.

It helps Singaporeans pay large bills in B2 and C wards, which are subsidised wards, and is meant to cover nine in 10 subsidised bills.

But that is no longer the case today.

“This nine-in-10 benchmark is being eroded, because hospital bills are getting larger and larger,” said Mr Ong.

Bill sizes have grown by 5 per cent annually in public hospitals, and by 7 per cent annually in private hospitals over the last few years, he said.

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As a result, the proportion of subsidised bills adequately covered by MediShield Life has come down to around eight out of 10, and is expected to slip further.

The practical impact of this is that subsidised patients are seeing unexpectedly large hospital bills, he said. After the subsidy and MediShield Life, there is still a substantial out-of-pocket component left.

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This is when higher healthcare costs start to bite.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) has, therefore, tasked the 11-member MediShield Life Council to comprehensively review the scheme, said Mr Ong.

The last time it was reviewed was in 2020, when premiums went up by 25 per cent on average.

MOH had said in 2019 that it will review claim limits for MediShield Life coverage every three years or so.

The MediShield Life Council is headed by Mrs Fang Ai Lian, the former chairwoman of Ernst & Young. It has already begun the review process and will look into three key areas.

First, the council will look into enhancing MediShield Life to give Singaporeans greater assurance against large bills. This means increasing the claim limits – how much a patient can claim from MediShield Life – for both surgical operations and hospital stays.

“We envisage a fairly significant increase in the claim limits. For example, for an episode involving angioplasty, where a stent is placed into your heart to open a blocked artery, plus, say, a few nights of ICU (intensive care unit) stay, the claim limits may need to double. This will reduce out-of-pocket costs significantly,” said Mr Ong.

Second, the council will look at enhancing other outpatient coverage. Mr Ong said there is a need to raise the claim limits for treatments such as kidney dialysis to reduce out-of-pocket expenses for patients.

The council will also explore extending coverage to more types of outpatient care.

Mr Ong pointed out that some of the most costly outpatient treatments are for cancer.

This had been an especially difficult challenge for Singapore, he said, with rising treatment costs.

The ministry had earlier reviewed cancer drug financing and introduced changes that allowed the Government to negotiate lower prices.