You will be able to compare three Integrated Shield plans for your chosen ward class and pick the one that fits your budget.
Find the premium table for the shield plan you hold now, or for one an adviser has put in front of you. Look up your age band and write down two cash amounts: the premium for the plan and the premium for its rider.
For most people, those two numbers are where the checking ends. The usual way into a shield plan is an adviser's suggestion and a first-year premium that seemed fine, with nothing else weighed against it. A proper comparison takes about 35 minutes. You settle on one ward class, find three plans made for it, and look at the things that set how much you pay over your lifetime.
Take the ward class from Lesson 4.2, "Ward class, panel doctors and pre-authorisation". It should be the one you would really go for if you had a planned operation. Every plan in your comparison should be designed for that class. A B1 plan and a private hospital plan are each built to pay a different kind of bill, so setting one against the other tells you very little.
compareFIRST, run by the Life Insurance Association and MoneySense, lists shield plans next to each other. Use it to shortlist three plans for your class. If you already have a plan, count it as one of the three. For each plan, download the product summary and the premium table from the insurer's own website.
Next to every figure, write where it came from and the date you looked it up. Insurers revise premiums and terms, and when you reopen the comparison months later you'll want to see how current each number is.
Set up one block for each plan, with a row for each of these:
premium by age band, with the MediSave share and the cash share in separate columns the claim limits relevant to you, such as the yearly limit and any cap on cancer treatment or outpatient care deductible and co-insurance, both found in the product summary panel rules: whether the plan has a panel, and how a claim is treated if your doctor is outside it pre-existing condition exclusions, if you are applying, with anything the plan would leave out in your case
Each plan's rider goes in a block of its own. A rider premium has no MediSave portion. You pay all of it in cash, so the rider's age-band row has a cash column only. To work out what each rider leaves you to pay, use the method in Lesson 4.3, "Deductibles, co-insurance and the co-payment riders must keep". For each rider, also record whether it pays the deductible, whether your share has a cap, and the point at which that cap starts to apply.
Your lifetime cash premiums to 80 are the total of every yearly cash premium from your present age through to 80, counting both end ages. Someone aged 34 pays 47 of them (80 - 34 + 1 = 47).
In a spreadsheet, list the age bands down the first column. Next to each, enter the number of years you will spend in that band. The columns after that hold the plan's cash premium and the rider's cash premium for each band. Multiply years by premium for each band and add the results to get the total. =SUMPRODUCT(years, cash premium) does this in one cell. Your first band starts at your present age, so enter only the years left in it. At 34 that might be one year or two. To check your work, the years column should add up to the number of premiums between now and 80, with both ages included.
The totals use today's premium tables, so what you actually pay will be higher. They are still the fairest comparison available, because every plan goes through the same calculation.
Jun Hao (an invented example) is 34, in good health, and holds an A class shield plan. He got it the way most people do: an adviser recommended it and the first-year premium seemed reasonable. He compares three A class plans from 34 to 80, which is 47 yearly premiums in all.
Plan A is his current plan, priced from the premium table in Lesson 4.4. His cash premiums to 80 come to S$59,700 for the plan and S$55,350 for the rider, S$115,050 together.
Plan B costs more in every age band. It comes to S$77,610 for the plan and S$55,350 for the rider, a total of S$132,960. That is about S$17,900 more than Plan A. The extra pays for higher claim limits, a large panel and a rider that covers the deductible.
Plan C costs least. It comes to S$47,760 for the plan and S$47,048 for the rider, S$94,808 in total and about S$20,200 less than Plan A. Its rider does not cover the deductible and its panel is small. If he uses a doctor outside the panel without pre-authorisation, the claim is settled on less favourable terms.
Next he runs a S$30,000 test bill through the riders, using the invented rider terms from Lesson 4.3. Under Plan A he would pay S$1,500 of it. Under Plan C he would pay S$4,350. Plan C saves him about S$20,000 in premiums over his lifetime, but each admission of that size costs him S$2,850 more.
He writes three lines below the comparison. First, Plan B's higher limits only matter for very large bills, and Plan A's limits look adequate for an A class ward, so the extra S$17,900 is not worth it to him. Second, Plan C is cheaper, but its small panel limits his choice of specialist. Third, because he is healthy he could switch to Plan C now, but that is risky, because a new insurer could exclude the back condition from Lesson 1.3. He keeps Plan A and will review the rider at 60.
Run a sample bill through each of your riders to see what your share of one admission would be under each plan. Then write a few lines under the comparison that weigh three things: lifetime cash, the cost-sharing terms that set your part of a bill, and the panel rules. Make your choice on those three. One year's premium is too little to decide on.
You can switch plans while you are healthy, but a new insurer could still exclude a condition you already have, so read the exclusions row before deciding. Your figures may lead you to a different plan from the one Jun Hao kept.
Now build your own comparison. Fix one ward class and choose three plans with their riders. Set out the premiums by age band, split into MediSave and cash. Put the limits, deductible, co-insurance and panel rules side by side. Total the lifetime cash premiums to 80 for each plan and rider. Below the comparison, write a note of a few lines saying which plan fits your ward choice and budget, and why.
Build the comparison of three plans with riders and add up the lifetime cash premiums for each. Then write down which plan suits your ward choice and your budget.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).