it was reported in the local media that dr susan lim's bill amounted to a cool $24.8 million for treating a patient linked to the brunei palace for 7 months.
the bill has yet to be paid although it was reduced not once but twice and became the heart of a case between dr lim and the singapore medical council.
the patient had breast cancer and later died.
my comments:
i know of another super whopper (with apologies to burger king) medical bill which simply dwarfs this latest one which was incurred by dr stanley ho, casino mogul extraordinaire after suffering a stroke in 2009 and the bill far surpasses the latest one on record.
what's my point?
that medical bills can run as high as the proverbial bottomless pit should not come as a surprise to anyone because medical inflation often runs the fastest ahead of other inflationary concerns.
that's why generally, insurers (and reinsurers) will usually take the route of offering healthcare products with reviewable and non-guaranteed pricing.
and i often cringe when i hear financial advisers telling their clients that the annual limit of an integrated shield plan should be sufficient to hedge future healthcare costs. but what if the client should surpass the annual limit and have to bear significant out-of-pocket expenses?
which is why my approach is different, for the following reasons:
a. although the annual limit of an integrated shield plan is up to $600,000
(for ntuc-income's enhanced preferred plan), this is still a dollar-capped
limit and
b. there may be an extreme case of the breaching of the annual limit and
if this happens, the financial adviser places himself/herself to the
exposure of litigation.
therefore, i always stress to the person/s in front of me that the hedging of future healthcare costs will be limited to the annual policy limit and this will be well documented in the kyc (know your client) forms.
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