Extended use of Medisave funds managed carefully

09 Jul 2011, Today

'Let 75-year-old fully tap Medisave' and 'Capacity and 3Ms'
Let 75-year-old fully tap Medisave

I REFER to the article "A full review of healthcare policies" (July 6).
My 75-year-old father is diabetic and has to visit the doctors regularly for checkups and to receive medication. Each of his visits costs him an average of S$75. This includes the cost of consultation with nurses and medication.

Only about 20 per cent of his bill can be charged to Medisave and he has to pay the rest in cash. As my father has a lifetime's worth of savings in his Medisave, why do the current policies not allow him to pay the whole bill using the funds in his Medisave account?

Isn't he at the perfect age to start tapping on the funds fully? Especially as it is his regular life-saving medication?
I sincerely hope the Government will take into consideration such scenarios when reviewing the health policies.

Letter from Sangeetha Bysheim
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Capacity and 3Ms

I AGREE that building more hospitals alone will not solve the problem of capacity. Without the right calibre of healthcare professionals, it defeats the purpose of adding even one more hospital.

The periodic grouses about waiting times should be taken in perspective as even in private hospitals or clinics, a patient has to wait. Policies should not be formulated based on facilitating convenience but on important essentials.
The "fine-tuning" of the 3Ms - Medisave, MediShield, Medifund - should be done on a more frequent basis, once every two years, to factor in the increasing costs of healthcare.

In its review, the Health Ministry should not "assume" that the public will find it expensive should there be a need to increase the premium for improved coverage but allow an opt-in, opt-out system and let them decide based on their ability to pay.
There is a need to liberalise further the use of Medisave for dental treatment. Currently, it is only available for certain dental surgical procedures. The cost of procedures such as root canal treatment, with subsequent crowns and dentures that might have to be made, is rather high and would be a tough financial outlay, especially for the elderly.

I hope the impending review evaluates the current situation from multiple angles to resolve glaring medium- and long-term issues.

Letter from Authur Lim

Reply From  MOH

WE would like to thank Ms Sangeetha Bysheim, in "Let 75-year-old fully tap Medisave" (July 7), and Mr Arthur Lim, in "Capacity and 3Ms" (July 7) for their thoughtful suggestions to support our review of healthcare policies.

Specifically, both Ms Bysheim and Mr Lim proposed extending Medisave use for non-acute medical care. Indeed, we have done so in recent years. Although Medisave is primarily designed to help Singaporeans pay for their hospitalisation expenses, we have extended withdrawals to help cover the outpatient treatment of major chronic diseases such as diabetes.

We have to manage the extended use of Medisave funds carefully to prevent the premature depletion of members' funds.
For now, we have limited the withdrawal from Medisave for chronic disease management and some higher cost vaccinations to S$300 per Medisave Account per year. We call this Medisave300. Last year, more than 120,000 patients withdrew about S$30 million from their Medisave accounts under Medisave300.

On Mr Lim's suggestion to extend Medisave use for dental treatments, we would like to highlight existing measures to help ameliorate the financial burden for elderly patients.

Currently, non-surgical dental outpatient treatments are already heavily subsidised for needy elderly patients under the Primary Care Partnership Scheme (PCPS).

From April this year, the PCPS has been further extended to cover two specialist dental procedures - root canal treatment and crowning - so that low-income elderly patients can see a private dentist for these procedures at polyclinic rates.
We will continue to monitor and review the adequacy of existing Medisave funds to support more uses going forward, bearing in mind the primary objective of Medisave to help cover members' hospitalisation bills.

Bey Mui Leng (Ms)
Director, Corporate Communications
Ministry of Health