Medi Shield Life changes good in principle but concerns remain

Impact on coverage, fairness of subsidy assessment and implications of higher deductibles among questions

- Salma Khalik

The second review of Medi Shield Life did not disappoint, with some out-of-the-box suggestions, such as tying it with the national Healthier SG initiative, in the hope that a healthier population would draw less on the insurance.

Many of the tweaks involve bringing the mandatory national health insurance scheme back to its original purpose - that is, to cover 90 per cent of subsidised bills - and to keep abreast of the latest, validated procedures.

All highly commendable, and accepted recently by Parliament.

Obviously, it also comes with a bigger price tag. Here, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has given the assurance that the less well off will not suffer, with the promise of $4.1 billion in support measures.

Minister of State for Health Rahayu Mahzam also assured Parliament that no one would lose coverage as a result of being unable to pay for it.

While I agree entirely, in principle, with the changes recommended, I do have some concerns.

PROVIDES FOR 9O PER CENT when Medi Shield Life was launched in 2015, one of its tenets was to fully cover the big medical bills of 90 per cent of patients seeking subsidised care.

But both back in 2020, when the first full review of the scheme was made, and again in 2024, the Medi Shield Life Council found that the proportion of subsidised bills fully covered by the insurance was 80 per cent or less.

Healthcare costs keep rising. This is a given.

The question here is whether Medi Shield Life can take price increases into account in order to continually maintain full coverage for 90 per cent of subsidised patients.

This would not require a full review of the scheme every year. Instead, it might work on a formula that when certain categories of claims start to fall below, say, 88 per cent of claims, the cap for that category is automatically raised.