25,000 Singapore Residents to pay extra 30% MediShield Life premium

Nation-wide hos­pit­al­iz­a­tion plan, MediShield Life, will be imple­men­ted on 1 Novem­ber 2015. Min­istry of Health has already iden­ti­fied 25,000 Singa­pore Cit­izens and Per­man­ent Res­id­ents with ser­i­ous pre-existing ill­nesses who will have to pay extra 30% extra premium for the next 10 years to cover the pre-existing ill­nesses. After which, they would pay the same premi­ums as their peers. If you belong to this group, you will receive a let­ter with details about your new MediShield Life cov­er­age, premi­ums and sub­sidies, includ­ing the Addi­tional Premi­ums. The vari­ous sub­sidies for MediShield Life premi­ums will also apply to Addi­tional Premiums.

If you cur­rently not insured with Medishield, you will also receive the let­ter soon to inform you on the premi­ums and sub­sidies. For oth­ers, you will only receive the let­ter one month before your plan is due for annual renewal from either the CPF Board (cover under MediShield) or your private insurer (cover under Integ­rated Shield Plan) with details about your premi­ums and sub­sidies for the MediShield Life com­pon­ent of your Integ­rated Shield Plan.

The broad cat­egor­ies of ser­i­ous pre-existing ill­nesses are:

Broad cat­egor­ies	Indic­at­ive examples (not exhaustive)
Can­cer	Lung can­cer, colorectal can­cer, breast can­cer, stom­ach cancer
Blood dis­orders	Parkinson’s dis­ease, Mus­cu­lar dys­trophy, Amyotrophic lat­eral scler­osis (ALS)
Heart or other cir­cu­lat­ory sys­tem diseases	Heart attack, Coron­ary artery dis­ease, Chronic ischaemic heart disease
Cerebrovas­cu­lar diseases	Stroke
Res­pir­at­ory diseases	Chronic obstruct­ive pul­mon­ary disease
Liver dis­eases	Alco­holic liver dis­ease , Chronic hep­at­itis, Fibrosis or cir­rhosis of liver
Autoimmune/ Immune Sys­tem diseases	Sys­temic lupus eryth­em­atosus, Human Immun­ode­fi­ciency Virus/ Acquired Immune Defi­ciency Syn­drome (HIV/ AIDS)
Renal dis­eases	Con­gen­ital heart dis­ease, Con­gen­ital renal dis­ease, Bil­i­ary atresia
Psy­chi­at­ric conditions	Schizo­phrenia
Chronic con­di­tion with ser­i­ous complications	Hyper­tens­ive heart dis­ease, Hyper­tens­ive kid­ney dis­ease, Dia­betes with kid­ney com­plic­a­tions, Dia­betes with eye complications

Those whose pre-existing con­di­tions are less ser­i­ous or are well-controlled, such as well-controlled dia­betes, or hyper­ten­sion with no com­plic­a­tions, osteoarth­ritis, pre-cancers, fibroids or cysts or those who were hos­pit­al­ized due to a one-off event, such as an acci­dent or dengue are not sub­jec­ted to the 30% addi­tional premium.