You will compare three Integrated Shield plans for your chosen ward class and decide which fits your budget.
Most people choose a shield plan the way Jun Hao chose his: an adviser suggests one, the first-year premium looks fine, and that's that. Comparing plans properly takes about 35 minutes. You pick one ward class, find three plans built for it, and line them up on the things that decide what you'll pay over a lifetime. By the end you'll know whether the plan you hold, or the one you're being offered, is a reasonable choice for your ward and your budget.
Start with the ward class you settled on in lesson 4.2, Ward class, panel doctors and pre-authorisation: the one you would actually choose for a planned operation. Compare only plans designed for that class. Comparing a B1 plan with a private hospital plan tells you nothing useful, because they're built for different bills.
Use compareFIRST, run by the Life Insurance Association and MoneySense, to see shield plans side by side, then go to each insurer's website for the product summary and premium table. Pick three plans for your ward class, including your current plan if you have one.
Note the source and the date you looked. Premiums and terms change, and you'll want to know how old your figures are when you come back to this.
Set up one block per plan with these rows:
premium by age band, from the insurer's table, split into MediSave and cash claim limits that matter to you, such as the yearly limit and any limits on cancer treatment or outpatient care deductible and co-insurance, from the product summary panel rules: whether there is a panel, and what happens if you use a doctor outside it pre-existing conditions: anything the plan would exclude for you, if you're applying
Then add the rider for each plan as its own block: its premium by age band, all cash, and what it leaves you paying, using the method from lesson 4.3, Deductibles, co-insurance and the co-payment riders must keep. Note whether the rider covers the deductible, and any cap on your share and when it applies.
For each plan, put the age bands in one column, the number of years you'll spend in each band in the next, and the cash premium for plan and rider in the columns after that. Multiply years by premium for each band and add them up. =SUMPRODUCT(years, cash premium) does it in one cell.
Start from your current age. If you're 34, the first band may only have a year or two left in it. The years should add up to the number of years from now to 80.
These totals use today's premium tables, so they understate what you'll pay. They're still the fairest way to compare plans, because each plan is measured the same way.
Every figure is an example invented for this exercise. Jun Hao compares three A class plans, from age 34 to 80, which is 47 years.
Plan A is the one he holds, with the premium table from lesson 4.4. Its cash premiums to 80 come to S$59,700 for the plan and S$55,350 for the rider, S$115,050 in total.
Plan B's cash premiums are higher across the bands, S$77,610 for the plan, with a rider costing the same S$55,350. Total S$132,960, about S$17,900 more than Plan A. In return it has higher claim limits and a large panel, and its rider covers the deductible.
Plan C is the cheapest: S$47,760 for the plan and S$47,048 for the rider, S$94,808 in total, about S$20,200 less than Plan A. But its rider doesn't cover the deductible, its panel is small, and non-panel claims without pre-authorisation get less favourable terms.
On a S$30,000 bill using the invented terms from lesson 4.3, Plan C's rider would leave him S$4,350 to pay, against S$1,500 under Plan A's rider. Over his lifetime, Plan C saves him about S$20,000 in cash premiums and costs him S$2,850 more on each admission of that size.
Jun Hao wrote three lines. Plan B's extra limits matter only for very large bills, and Plan A's limits look adequate for an A class ward, so the extra S$17,900 isn't worth it to him. Plan C is cheaper, but the small panel limits his choice of specialist. And because he's healthy, switching to Plan C would be possible now, though not risk-free, since a new insurer could exclude his back condition from lesson 1.3. He decided to stay with Plan A and revisit the rider at 60.
Your decision may differ. The point is that it rests on lifetime cash, the terms that decide your share of a bill, and the panel rules, rather than on one year's premium.
A finished comparison has one ward class, three plans with their riders, premiums by age band split into MediSave and cash, limits, deductible, co-insurance and panel rules side by side, and a lifetime cash total to 80 for each plan and rider. Under it sits a note of a few lines saying which plan fits your ward choice and your budget, and why.
Build the comparison of three plans with riders, total the lifetime cash premiums, and write which plan fits your ward choice and budget.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).