Singapore Expats

Dear all expats,

I have just been approved PR 3 months ago and it's now time to renew my health insurance policy with Great Eastern which I have been enrolled for the past year. As I am now also required to pay for MediShield and CareShield, are there other options for my private insurance policies that act as an add on on top of MediShield and CareShield? Because my agent is suggesting me to keep the same policy.
Thank you.

You could share what policies you have… the agent wants your yearly commission, of course they’ll ask you to keep your policy.

CareShield: It’s a disability insurance from the government. You’ll only get payout if you’re unable to do 2 out of 5 of the criteria.

MediShield: It’s a hospitalisation plan from the government. Only covers up to 100K.

Most important thing people recommend is to add an Integrated Plan (IP) to your MediShield to increase the coverage to either 500K or 1 million.

There’s also the option to add on a Rider to the IP to reduce the cash you pay when you are hospitalised.

Priority to have: Integrated Plan, Critical Illness, Life Insurance

You might want this at some point: Personal Accident, Longterm Care, Disability Insurance

Case by case: Early critical illness

You can’t trust an insurance salesperson because they have every incentive to sell you all kinds of nonsense that you don’t need.

Priorities should be:

1. Integrated shield plan - it is the best deal you can get here. Main decision is which ward you can accept.

2. Disability insurance - care shield has a lot of gotchas — if you can’t work and make money, it can be a real burden.

3. Term life - only to the minimum extent it is needed, i.e. only to cover income from you that supports dependents today, and don’t forget to subtract any savings you have that can self-cover.

Stuff like critical illness and early stage should not be priorities, and probably shouldn’t even be on your list unless you’ve got a family history of something it covers. They are just too narrow with lots of gotchas.

Personally, I only have coverage that my company provides, which is about $40k medical $200k accident and $200k term life. It’s highly inadequate, but I can self-insure to some extent. God didn’t put me on this earth to make insurance companies rich, and besides, I honestly don’t much care.