New Spore: What good is Medisave if you can’t use it when needed?

June 5, 2014 Leave a comment

What good is Medisave if you can’t use it when needed?

June 1st, 2014 |  Author: Contributions

My mother recently suffered a heart attack. She was hospitalised and a stent was inserted into her heart. The resultant hospital bill came up to about $18,400.

My brother and I have more than $90,000 in our Medisave accounts, but only $3,950 could be deducted from my brother’s account as this was the maximum amount allowed. We had to pay the remaining amount of more than $14,000 in cash.

Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said the money in our Central Provident Fund accounts is ours (“CPF money is your money, says Chuan-Jin”; Monday), so why could we not use our money to pay our mother’s hospital bill?

Even if the full amount were deducted from my Medisave, I would still have more than $27,000 remaining. Moreover, I am still working and can continue to contribute to build up the funds again.

Instead, we had to find a way to come up with the cash portion for the bill.

I understand that CPF and Medisave funds are to be used for retirement and medical emergencies. But what good is this money if we cannot use it when we need it? CPF usage policies should be reviewed and fine-tuned. The Government should always strive for continual improvements to better the lives of the people.
Danny Tseng
* Letter first appeared in ST Forum (31 May) under “Review Medisave usage policies”.
Editor’s note: Notice that our Medisave system is forces the next generation to pay for the current generation if the current generation doesn’t have enough money in his or her CPF. This can snowball to the 3rd generation. In other first world countries, they treat each citizen individually with dignity. As long as you are a citizen, you are entitled. Here, if your family can take care of you, let the family do so and the government won’t spend a cent. Never mind if the family members have financial problems of their own to solve. It’s a major difference in how the government treats its citizens.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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