i am using axa. anual limit 500.000, no life-time limit and renewable at the option of the policy holder onces accepted. very good coverage but low on outpatient cancer & dialysis. you might want to buy extra coverage for that for example from tokio marine or others.

prudential,

feel free to contribute. dont just advertise - this is a discussion no marketplace. (sorry for the cross-post but it also applies here)

and i did read the blog. you provide little actual information. do you have factual support that prudential is a better medical insurance than others. i doubt that - actually i am pretty sure there are plans around that offer the same, similar or better coverage at a lower effective price over the insurance period.

generally ILP is the more costly variant that forces a lock-in on the insured if the overall coverage is identical. if you cant handle early savings and save them for future high premiums and you know the plan is perfect for you and will remain so then ILP might be a decent choice. for pretty much all other cases GI will be better than ILP for identical coverage.

xeroxeropi,

we are talking about medical (H&S) insurances and not life. i do have serious objections to life insurances but that is a different story.

ILP H&S plans are almost always more expensive to the consumer than the same cover for H&S from GI. this is due to the nature of the product. a GI H&S plan outperforms ILP H&S plans on a multitude of levels (no lock-in, no high upfront premiums, lower overall costs) that we already discussed to great length in this thread. in a nutshell: if you want a medical card, stay far away from ILP H&S. (this applies to the vast majority). just because people purchase those plans doesnt mean they are good plans. ppl tend to make bad decisions.

also purchasing a whole life insurance is generally not a good idea because it creates a lock-in situation with significant issues of underinsurance when it comes to the core protection areas (health and if you so wish TPD) when you look at the premium you pay.

costly means: you pay more with ILP than you would pay with GI for the same (!) product. this is due to the nature of the two products and its inevitable. why pay more for something when you dont need to?

on a side-note: your posts would be ever so much easier to read if you would use the normal font. the big font is pretty hard to read for me.

EDIT: sorry - i got the threads mixed up. the detailed discussion on let's say pro/con for ILP vs. H&S is not in this thread but here:
http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?act=ST&f=153&t=940897

This post has been edited by PJusa: Jan 31 2010, 11:17 AM

QQstore88,

allianz GI does have a standalone medical card. actually two if i am not mistaken.

xeroxeropi,

i'd still appreciate a normal font. ILP and GI H&S can very well be compared. i am not saying it "sucks". i am saying it's not the better product. it will cost you more and provide you further disadvantages. the question at hand is about medical cards. be it by means of rider or otherwise. the general consensus is that a standalone plan will almost always be the better choice for the consumer.
there is no need to add further insurance products in the mix since we are looking at medical insurances. and i do understand the differences as well as the structure of those products pretty well if i may dare to say so.

your claim is rather unsubstantiated and has remained so. if i am in the market for a H&S plan, why would you try to sell me a product i dont need. and quite frankly whole life plans offer only bits of everything and at the end of the day the protection level i bought is not sufficient because i have so many products that i didnt really need. a lousy life insurance with low cover is pretty worthless if my medical bill exceeds the lifetime limit. that is not a better product.

i really dont see any point in your argument about the sickness ("it's totally absurd to get only a medical card coz you never know when you will get sick and how much your sickness may or may not cost you. no one is a fortuneteller and can see into the future. hence, this is why ins agents advise you to get all your bases covered (Life, TPD, CI, PA, H+S (medical bills)) before you even think about doing investments.") i'd say the opposite is true.

"now, about your lock-in period argument...i'm quite confused about your stand. why are you advising ppl to get medical card, sthg that premiums will be considered burnt when you dont stay in hospital/getting treatment vs advising ppl against getting sthg for their family since everyone will die in the end??"

apparently you dont know what a lock-in is. its not a lock-in-period as for a loan but works as this: an ILP policy has uniform charges and as such forces high payments from the beginning, making you pay for the future. this money is locked away and can only be released if you want to switch. if you want to switch during a downturn, you will suffer significant losses. also the money invested might not be as well invested as otherwise. the commitment of money creates a lock-in with this particular product.

the concept of burining money is simply wrong. an insurance is the commitment to pay the average damage over the group to ensure that in case something happens the cost will be (largely) absorbed.

if you (general you - not you personally) want to make money with an insurance, you (s.o.) are looking at the wrong product. there is no money to be made of an insurance. that is what investments are for.

i think you have misunderstood my statements severly when you assume i consider insurance a burden. that is not the case

with reference to your statement of not enough cover: of course 60k is nothing. i would assume a good medical cover starts with 200-400k annual limit. that will certainly beat a combi whole life cover with say 100k/100k/100k (H&S, TPD, Death).

you might want to read the thread i mention to find out why its smart to seperate insurances and why ILP will often not be a choice that is as good as it seems.

just because i say GI H&S is a better choice thatn an ILP H&S doesnt mean that this is the only insurance one should get either. i would also look into a good PA (preferably with a cover of 500k or 1M), CI seems like a waste of money if you have a good H&S and then you can always buy a simple straight forward death for all reasons policy if you so wish.

this allows you to easily adjust the coverages, seek the cheapest or best offers, switch covers or even cancel them as needed.

the point with regards to the price of medical insurance has been made: so called fixed premium policies must be more expensive than the same cover from GI with annual adjustments because the future is uncertain and insurances work for money. a GI can adjust the premium in real time with a lower margin to be profitable while the other structure requires a healthy safety-margin due to risk-management. it's that simple.

the other reason as to what makes whole life products costly has already been said: its the bundling of all kinds of riders. this migth make sense if you really want them. most of the time that is not the case. what you actually want might be a good medical cover. you can use all the money and get an ever so much better cover by buying what you want and just that.

This post has been edited by PJusa: Jan 31 2010, 09:53 PM

weikian,

i totally understand the reason for CI. the reason why i dont like it is because it only pays for the named 36 illnesses under conditions (sometimes requires survival of 3 months etc). the intention is good and yes it serves as an income replacement. but it would be ever so much more worth it IF it would cover a lumpsum payment if for whatever reason i am no longer to work. naturally this would be slightly more costly but significantly better.

to me CI in some ways resembles a lottery. if i am unfit to work due to sickness and i am not struck with one of the CIs then what? of course some protection still outperforms none though. to me it's not so important due to very personal circumstances. but there are (costly) options available in the expatriate insurance market that are also open for malaysians which will cover the risk of beeing unable to work with a lump-sum payment. i think william russell and some french insurance with a branch in KL do offer this.