Hi all,

I am looking at medical card, and I have a preference for standalone card instead of an ILP. However, someone told me that the premium at renewal for standalone medical card is not guaranteed. This is coupled with a bad experience, where one of my parent took a standalone medical card. Upon first claim, the next year's premium was slapped with a 75% loading due to "increased risk".

I was told that ILP won't have such problem (by an agent, of course). Any increase in the premium is based on the pool's risk, not an individual's risk. However, reading from RinggitPlus suggest that actually this will happen regardless of the plan.
Would like to ask sifu-sifu which should I go for? Standalone v ILP, and what are the terminology I should take note while buying these products?
TL;DR: will my this year's claim impact my next year's medical card renewal premium? (for both standalone and ILP).

Thanks all.

Can you share which standalone medical card which you go for as I'm looking for one as well? Can PM if is this is not something you want to discuss publicly

Thanks for your feedback. Is your AIA medical card plan name A-Plus MediFlex? Saw quite a number of standalone medical plan from AIA web site.

When comes to insurance premium increased, our perception is always ages, inflation and cost of insurance raised, and this is also what the agent always told us.
One of the important factor of premium reprice where many ppl overlook, is the pool of product the insurance company allocated. When we buy an insurance or pay our premium, our fund will be allocate into a shared pool where, this pool will continue to be used when new customer buy their insurance, or existing customer renew their premium. In 10 - 15 years or maybe less, new product may be introduce, insurance company may decide to create another fund's pool to cater for all the new product premiums, that time they will hard sell the new product with more benifits, more coverage, and more lower premium, this will cause almost all their new customer to take up the new product, and left the old product no one buying, this will even cause the existing customer in old product upgrade to new product but of couse they would need to re-assess their health condition again.

What this means.
1) insurance company doing this is to reduce their product premium, by segregating healthy individual and high risk individual, making their new product more attrative to young and healthy generation.
2) Those eldest with sub-optimal health or with existing health condition may not able to buy the new product, they have to stay in the old product funding pool. Many of them may already bought the insurance 10 or 20 years ago, and they are fully healthy the first time they buy it, and they may choose to pay high premium for longer sustainbility that time.
3) Insurance premium increase not only due to cost of insurance - inflation, increase of age, medical/hospital cost, but also due to new funding pool introduce by insurance company.
4) The reason to creating the new funding pool is to attract more new customer with more lower premium. The premium can stay low due to insurance company have segregate their existing loyal customer which already bought ther product 10 or 20 years but with health issue or old age into another old pool.
5) This will resulted only bunch of policy holders with health condition and older age remain stay in the old funding pool, no new holder, and continue lossing healthy policy holders due to switching to new product.
6) Finally those stay in the old pool will faced the continuous premium increased year over year due to unbalanced type of policy holders. People bought 40 years of sustaibility policy on age 30, by age 50 premium may goes double or more due to the new funding pool introduce, that time agent may tell you spike of the price due to insurance cost. This will also cause situation where old funding pool full of those eldest and holders with medical condition, so price spike is explainable and unavoidable. As a result of price hike many in the old pool have no choice but choose to abandone their already paid 10 or 20 years policy, and also these holder no longer eligible applying any new policy product. I wont said insurance company doing it with intention but customer abandone policies in the old funding pool definitely will greatly give them advantage by reducing their claim profile risk.
7) We as consumer do not hv visibility when a new pool been introduce, funding in and out from the old pool, and the statistic type of holders in the pool.
8) Premium projection in SI will only take take consideration of our age, inflation and cost of insurance, they don't project fund pool, as the insurance company can introduce pool anytime as they wish, actual premium increased will be far different from what been stated in SI.
9) What's more is if you buy a policy when almost reach to the end lifetime of the funding pool, and a new pool introduce with the new product, you will face the substantially premium increased which far away from your projected premium in your SI,  even you have 15 years sustainbility quoted in your policy  this may still happend in 2 years, 3 years  or 5 years time. Besides, we have no visibility in their pool lifetime, so we wont know when it start and end. Of couse anyone qualified can still buy the new product, with the new health assessment and also reset the 6 years agent's commission.
10) We may said that this will not impact us, because who doesn't want low premium price due to the new pool implemented, but we all will get old one day and potential health problem too, that's why we choose longer sustaibility with higher premium price when first buy, new premium raised should not be too far away from our sustaibility amount as listed in SI, and the increase of premium due to new pool introduced is something indeed unethical.

Can those medical plan of your desired (to chance every 10 years) be bought online diy or have to go through agent?
What about your current medical plan? Through diy Online or agent?

I believes you and money others would definitely feels that 50k or 200k medical coverage would be not enough (many years down the road).
Thus have to buy from agent if needed more higher coverage than that.
If change to new plan every 10 year,....your agent will loves you.

You had previously for many times had been saying you don't and won't like to pay for your agent holidays expenses

Can buy multiple 100k or 200k from separate diy online platforms/companies instead of 1 large amount (1 plan) from agent?

Will upgrading existing medical plan ( if insurance company offer it to your existing plan) be a better option than getting a whole new plan after every 10 years?.

Does the upgrade plan still uses the pool of money from the old pool that are about to be used up or the upgraded plan will use a new pool of money?
Any idea about it?

Another question, are those diy online medical plan offered on cashless admission or have to pay first claim later option