singaporean wrote:I have lived in singapore for 20 years and no one I know have any insurance. THe system is highly subsidised and unless you need a big big major operation, it is a waste of money for private insurance. The best thing is for you to apply for PR (real easy) and use your medishield to cover expenses.
A visit to the doctors here cost about $30 including medicines. You don't have to go to a pharmacy for that. A emergency admission to the ER cost about $60 for foreigners. If you wife is pregnant, it would be best to get a doctor when you come. A good hospital to try would be Mount Elizabeth and Gleneagles. The best public hospital for women and children is the KK hospital for women and childen.
Hi, sorry, but I totally disagree with
singaporean's highly questionable logic ... "If I never get ill, I never have medical bills and therefore insurance is a waste of money."
While that's true "If I never get ill" , NOBODY knows whether they're going to get ill, and the likelyhood of having serious health problems (sadly) gets higher as you get older. The catch-22 of this is that also as you get older it's harder to get insurance (because now you're a bigger risk) and it's usually more expensive.
The whole point of insurance is to cover UN-planned events, and you just have to accept that fact that if you never get ill you've wasted your money (except of course for the peace of mind it buys you and your family).
I do agree with
singaporean that local health care for minor visits to the doctor is cheap enough to not worry about, and that medishield will help a little on bigger items. It is -very- little by the way, if you check all the conditions, the first X dollars that you have to pay yourself, etc. Take a look here
http://www.cpf.gov.sg/MyCPF/TH_3.asp and note all the "... up to S$nnn ..." statements.
But to protect yourself and your family I strongly believe you should seek professional advice on this. (No, I am not an insurance salesman looking for business).
Insurance can be (even according to the professionals) mind-booglingly confusing, and unscrupulous salesmen certainly don't help. My company recently received a presentation (happy to forward to anyone interested, though may not make much sense without the speaker) in which that LACK of value in medishield was sadly obvious. Case in point, a 35 year old woman with a not unusual back problem received a bill for S$8,900, for which medishield only repaid S$900!
Sorry for the lecture here.
singaporean is entitled to his/her opinion and I'm delighted that he/she has had so many years of good health. I'm also not criticising the Singapore health system nor medishield, of which as a PR living here for the last 12 years I've made good use, but you
must understand the limitations of them.
Good luck