Singapore Expats

Hello,
A friend is considering moving to Singapore and she has a diabetic child - 8 years old. In my personal experience, health insurance companies here try to exclude prexisting conditions from their policy or charge you so much more that you opt not to have the coverage.

Does anyone know of a Health Insurance company that will accept diabetic children without making them pay through the roof? Must add the child is in perfect health otherwise.

I hope I can get good leads from this post. Thanks,

Paolita

Hi Paolita,

As regarding your last posting, my suggestion for your friend is to proceed with the application first and see what the insurer offer. She can try applying with different insuers at the same time, inorder to compare their offers too.

I think I can help you with some advice.

In general the best health insurance plan in Singapore is only offered to Singaporeans or Singapore PRs. So you might want to apply for PR first. Such plans are called "Shield Plans". Other plans for expatriates are non-comparable as the cost of using your hard cash is higher and the coverage is not comprehensive enough.

All Shield Plans covers Inpatient Hospitilisation treatment charges, Outpatient is only for Kidney failure treatments and Cancer treatments, as these 2 illnesses requires very regular visits to the hospital for outpatient treatments.Best of all they cover you for LIFE.

But to purchase the plan , the condition is the person must be healthy. If he is not healthy at that point of time, the company will underwrite the health condition inorder to see whether he is 1) Insurable, 2)Any exclusions. Most for the cases for diabetic people, there will be exclusions. This is called Full Medical Underwriting.

However there this Shield plan in particular in Singapore which does not use Full Medical Underwriting. They use Moratarium Underwriting. They will give people with poorer health a chance to be covered fully. Moratarium does not take into account any condition you have now or in the past. What they do is that you have to fulfill 5 years of waiting perioud whereby the insured cannot have any treatment or consultation for any illness. If the insured fulfilled the 5 years of waiting period , he or she will be covered without any dispute of any past illnesses prior to signing the plan. That I think might help your Child if he or she now don't require any follow up consultation,. or medication or any treatment at all.

Nonetheless, your child will still be possible to be covered under a Life Insurance plan with Disability and Critical Illness coverage. This is not for hospitilisation. Once the person contracted with any one of the 30 critical illnesses listed in Singapore, for example kidney failure, cancer or loss of Sight or a Permanent disability , he or she will receive a lump sum payout which can be used for day to day expenses of the patient like food, medication, dressings, or any follow up consultations etc.

Remember, diabetes is just a chronic condition, it may lead to Kidney Failure , disability or even loss of sight. So a life insurance plan will be useful as well in the event the "shield" plan does not cover for the diabetic condition.


Take note usually Diabetes may have future implications of kidney failure or disability or even loss of sight.

certain group insurance may cover existing condition after a number of year's waiting period. you may explore the possibility with your company.