Sale of all but two existing IP riders will stop from April 2026

New riders must meet MOH rules that aim to curb rising premiums, healthcare costs

- Yap Wei Qiang Correspondent

Almost all current Integrated Shield Plan (IP) rider plans will not be sold come April 2026, when the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) new requirements take effect.

Only two plans out of 28 available now can continue to be sold to new policyholders from April 1.

MOH announced in November that new IP riders sold from April 2026 will no longer be allowed to cover the minimum deductibles set by MOH, meaning patients with the new riders have to pay at least $1,500 before insurance coverage kicks in.

The co-payment cap will also be doubled from the current $3,000 to $6,000, which means those on the new riders will need to pay a larger portion of their bills.

This is to address rising insurance premiums and private healthcare costs and, in turn, slow down the migration of private healthcare patients to the public sector, which already caters to 90 per cent of patients.

As a result of MOH’s latest requirements, new riders are expected to cost a lot less — premiums will be about 30 per cent lower than those of existing riders with maximum coverage.

But current riders whose premiums are set at a relatively low level and so could even be cheaper than the new riders that replace them will still be on the way out.

In response to queries from The Straits Times, MOH said: “All existing riders that do not meet these (new) requirements, even if they have lower premiums and higher co-payment requirements than the most generous riders today, will not be available to new policyholders from April 1, 2026.”

For the estimated two million Singapore residents who had bought riders before Nov 26, when MOH announced the new requirements, they are currently not affected by MOH’s requirements.

Insurance companies in the Singapore market will study whether to adjust the coverage of the existing riders.

All seven IP insurers now offer riders that provide additional coverage on top of the IP coverage.