Male, non-smoker, 50 years 1 month

Just look around for good medical plans. Really they sell the same medical insurance to adults and kids. The question is usually whether one would get just the medical insurance or with the life insurance portion, which btw, that’s how most agents are selling it to you.

Few points to take note while buying medical insurance.
1) Annual limit and lifetime limit. I think annual limit is more important.
2) Outpatient dialysis and cancer (Personal opinion: I feel this is important because of the long term nature and/or the high cost)
3) Room & board. If you are very particular about having a single room, do make sure room & board is enough to cover roughly the cost of single room rate.
4) Panel hospital. Location and preferred hospital.
5) Cashless (with medical card) or reimbursement basis (no medical card). I notice some insurance companies have the latter option.

Not sure what else to note.

I just notice my early critical illness plan only will pay when survive 30 days after having the critical illness. what is the reason other than the typical waiting period, the insurance company add in this survive 30 days thing? Is it common among all insurance companies that we need to survive 30 days only can claim critical illness ? too many waiting periods. very confusing.

Hi,

I'm new to this topic. Please advise.
1. Medical Card; is it enough 100k annual limit or should I opt for a highest plan of 200k?
2. Is women specific illness is really needed? I'm thinking of taking a cancer rider which include CIS gender specific instead of taking women rider. Is this ok?
3. For life insurance, for a new graduate like me who's income will increase in future, is it recommended to take term life compared to investment linked? What I understand, term life is cheaper, but in investment linked, you could increase your BSA in the future.
Thanks.

1. It depends. Different medical cards have different terms of coverage, and it is not so black-and-white as each company formats their quotation somewhat differently. One company may have lower per-annum coverage but has better terms of coverage (take-home medicine can be claimed for example). As it is, RM100k should be enough for typical operations and stay in some of the better private hospitals.

2. In my opinion, the women-specific riders are way too expensive. This is due to the law of large numbers in that, only half of the population are women so only half of the population is eligible to take the rider, and from that already small number, only a few are taking those riders thus making it expensive for everyone. A question though, is the coverage meant for medical costs or a pay-out in lump-sum? Because if it is the latter, you are simply wasting money. The rider is too expensive for such a small s um.

3. This matter is up for debate, but I find investment-linked is much more flexible. You need a good agent who will sit down with you with the computer and design the policy for you though. Remember to keep the premium as LOW as the computer software allows you to do it. Look up for the term "policy slack" or something like that. The bigger the slack, the more you are OVERPAYING for your policy. Here's an illustration:



This post has been edited by wild_card_my: Nov 22 2014, 04:45 PM

The reason is whenever a CI claim is being submitted, the insurer will have to verify the claim as the CI claim is not as straight forward (and evident) as compared to the Accidental Death/Total Disability cases.

Pass records of pre-existing illness (especially if the policy is still new and below the 2 year incontestability period) needs to be check prior approval for the said claim.

1. Whenever you join a company, normally the company will also provide you with medical coverage.

Even though it is limited (say RM30K/year?), you can use that to your advantage by adding it to your own personal insurance. This means if you were to get RM100K/yr and coupled with your company medical, you will have RM130K annual limit.

Whenever there is a need for a claim, always try to claim from your company insurance before touching your personal insurance.

For example, if the bill is RM50K, you may claim RM30K from your company insurance, PAY CASH RM20K as settlement to the hospital (during checkout) and file a claim for RM20K to your personal insurance.

The above will save you premium for buying too much insurance, especially when you had just started working. You should not spend too much on insurance since by doing so, you may have very little for investment to grow your money.

Investment here refers to buying property, stocks, mutual funds et cetra, and NOT Investment linked Plans (ILP).

2. As you may had already know, the Early Critical Illness (ECI) like Carcinoma In-Situ of Cancer is not payable in the normal 36 Critical Illness.

Hence these days, most insurer introduces the ECI to bridge this gap. Personal opinion, it is more of a gimmick by the insurer to generate more revenue. The reason why I say this is that whenever a person is diagnosed with ECI, the chances of recovery is high.

However if a person is diagnosed with a 36 Critical Illness, the chances of recovery will be slim (though not impossible from early detection).

A person wealth is from his/her health. Your ability to work to generate an income is your greatest asset. An ECI, mostly the said person will recover after 3 months and he/she is able to get back to work.

However, if a person is diagnosed with a 36 CI, most of the time, the livelihood to be able to generate an income becomes highly questionable. This is also why the insurer will only waive the insurance premium if the client is diagnosed with a 36 CI and not ECI.

This is why I say it is better to concentrate on 36 CI, rather than wasting the premium on ECI.

Of course it does not stop you from buying ECI if you want to be paid (say 30% or 50% of the sum insured of the ECI).

3. Life Insurance is only required when you have responsibility (eg, kids, house, for parents, cover for debts etc). You may keep this at minimum (or at least enough to cover for the funeral expenses - touch wood).

You may swing the coverage towards 36 CI and/or Accidents.

ILP is more flexible that if you want to upgrade the BSA later, you may do so whereas for term insurance, you will need to add on another policy. There is no right or wrong.

--
Lastly, WORK ON YOUR OWN BUDGET and NOT THE AGENT'S BUDGET.

Rule of the thumb, do not spend more than 10% of your salary on insurance.

This post has been edited by roystevenung: Nov 22 2014, 05:57 PM

The agent told me the medical card won't cover women specific illness. And the statistic for ie breast cancer is quite high. So isn't it important, or is this a misleading statement?

Thank you for your advice. Looks like I need to meet up with some of them. I just request quotation online before this.

Sadly, I'm just a government servant. No free medical card for me

I do try to keep them at minimum %. That's why I'm seeking for advice. Thanks

This post has been edited by henshin7: Nov 23 2014, 01:06 AM

If you're gov servant, you may try cuepacscare,
a cheaper medical card for gov servant

roystevenung

PRU have any deductible medical card plan?

Yes, see below:-

- Pruflexi med is either Rm300 deductible (per same disability) or zero deductible (full claim).

- Pruhealth there is option of:-
1) deductible Rm3k or Rm10k

Or

2) co-insurance inpatient min Rm300 or 10%, max Rm1k. Outpatient 10%, max Rm2k

Survival period is not common in insurance industry, it exist in minority of the companies, not every company impose them. Your definition of survival period is right, one need to be survive the illness for 30 days before can claim the said illness.

Hi Henshin,

1)RM100,000 of annual limit is definitely enough for current even for critical illness. However, it might not be enough for the future as inflation in medical field is as high as 5-10% per annum. Organ transplant is costing about RM300,000 currently and it's projected to double the value in the next 20 years. Great Eastern is having a medical card as high as RM990,000 with life and 36 critical illness protection and the premium is about RM200/month, which is very affordable.

2)I have understand that you are looking for a budget protection, then I'd suggest you to look at Early 36 Critical Illness as it's much more economic. However, there is definitely some extra protection giving in Lady rider but that shouldn't become priority in my opinion.

3)I'd suggest investment link if this is your first insurance plan as you will be able to purchase a comprehensive coverage including Life, Critical Illness medical card and etc under a single plan. Thus, your waiver will be able to protect your medical card and you don't have to pay for premium shall you have diagnose with critical illness/ TPD. If you already owned a medical card with waiver then you can look at term insurance for life coverage only to protect for your estate. The option to increase your BSA in future shouldn't be your concern at all as if you are healthy, I don't see much different of topping up in existing Investment linked plan vs buying additional term.

For the question of initial cost of ownership for Investment linked vs term, I don't think term is cheaper. In fact, ILP can quote in cheaper premium compare to term in some cases with same sum assured.

henshin7

Listen to koinibler, the plan is really affordable at RM32/month. http://www.cuepacscare.my/manfaat.html


However, some of the points we should take into consideration since this is "private hospital medical card"
1)Annual limit is RM40,000 and per admission limit is RM20,000. This is sufficient in government hospital but might not sufficient in private hospital for simple surgery such as Laparoscopic Appendectomy already cost about RM15,000 in reputable hospital, not to mention inflation for the future cost and critical illness.
2)Kidney Dialysis and Cancer Chemotherapy is capping at RM2,000/month. Kidney dialysis might sufficient but Cancer Chemotherapy single treatment cost about RM5,000-RM10,000.
3)Pre-hospitalization and post-hospitalization is 30 days. Most illness will need post-hospitalization as high as 90days minimum.

Verdict: It is a very good alternative for personal insurance, but it might not efficient as normal private medical card as the limit is too low, you wouldn't dare to use the medical card in private hospital because you scare it might over the limit and you have to pay the leftover bill which is tremendously high. Example if the bill is RM25,000, you have to pay the left over of RM5,000. Nevertheless, the premium is really price at a very superb range of RM32/month, a good initiative from government.

1. Really depends on your monthly budget, afford the limit that goes with your monthly premium. Higher is always better but it's also much more expensive.
2. For women specific illness, normally it's much more advisable to take if you do have the additional cash flow as it's quite common nowadays women get breast cancer or cervical cancer.
3. Traditional policy is guaranteed whereas Investment Linked is not, however if you're young, you can always opt for Investment linked product as it's cheaper where as Traditional policy are much more expensive in the beginning.

Actually it's quite common, even in other parts of the world. Though according to my reading (based on input by experts), it is less common now than it was...

Medical card cover all diseases except otherwise stated upfront that it will be excluded and any pre-existing diseases, etc. So, it does cover. But keep in mind medical card covers if you are hospitalised. Out-patient procedure are only covered for certain events such as accident (emergency only?), cancer and dialysis.

Now, for some (not all, some just reimburse as charged) medical cards out-patient dialysis and cancer has its own separate limit. If cancer/dialysis lifetime limit is 100k, then you used up that 100k, then it’s no more claims for cancer/dialysis, even though you could be having lifetime limit 1mil or unlimited on your medical card.

If you are more worried about cancer/dialysis (due to family history), try going for medical card that says as charged for outpatient dialysis/cancer treatment.

PS: If there’s family history, there’s a chance one will be excluded or loaded… that doesn’t work in your favour too…

PPS, something to ponder about: Now note that it refers to outpatient cancer treatment. Now if I were to do it in-patient treatment?

Outpatient can also be used for surgical procedure (not necessarily for accidental cases only) for example cataract surgery whereby the patient goes home the same day.

Chemotherapy for cancer & Kidney dialysis is to be done as an outpatient and Guarantee Letter will not be issued even if the Doctor put in a requisition for it.

HTH

guys if between hong leong medical card and prudential medical, which one is better? thx

As quote from adele123, she had done a great job to list down the important point to take note of getting medical insurance.

One thing I like to add is guarantee renewal and "the right to cancel/terminate" clause which very important when consider medical plan to ensure the plan are keep going without worry medical plan being revised or cancel.

Why only limit to both company? There are other companies which competitive in medical plan.

This post has been edited by conqu3ror: Nov 24 2014, 11:59 AM

Which prudential medical card and which HLA medical card? Each of them probably has a few medical insurance on the shelf for different purposes. Unfair to say which is better.

Note that most insurance company kinda have the “same same but different” feel of their medical insurance. They don’t have the exact same thing… and your questions is way too general. Also, do price comparison as well.

hi i need a medical insurance with investment link for my wife....35, non smoker, works with government...RM 3k per month....nothing fancy....just a backup as she plans to serves the government so basic health care is provided....looking for prudential...tq...