Do We Need Medical Insurance?
Like road accidence, we unconsciously believe that bad things would never happen to us. That’s why we feel reluctant to opt for medical insurance or takaful. We are lucky that transportation insurance is mandatory. If not, I wonder how many of us will buy such insurance. Here I found a nice reading about medical insurance. It may sound biased as the blog is about insurance but just take it as an insight of what we have not carefully thought about.
First of all, do you know that a medical and health insurance policy is generally designed to help you cover the cost of private medical treatment such as cost of hospitalisation and healthcare services, if you are diagnosed with covered illnesses or have had an accident.
Just imagine the cost of not having any health insurance. If you are involved in an accident, or contract a serious illness, you have to pay the hospital bills from your own pocket. Prior to admitting to certain private hospitals, you would also have to pay a deposit. If your family members, i.e. your spouse or children, get seriously ill or hurt, the medical costs can lead to a total depletion of your savings. In some cases, it may even cause bankruptcy!
Another reason is that your family will have to opt for public health care facilities, and wait in line with hundreds of other patients. Besides that, you still have to pay for expensive operations that are not covered under public health care.
I want to relate to you a true story which happened last night. I was frantically trying my best to assist my client to see which hospital had neurosurgeon facility and would accept an seriously injured accident victim from another hospital.
You see, last night my client’s uncle was involved in a very bad motorcyle accident and was immediately rushed to a public hospital. Due to the severity of the injury, a neurosurgeon was required but unfortunately that particular hospital did not have the necessary facilities. My client was left in a dilemma. Her uncle was already admitted to the hospital but nothing could be done at the moment because the hospital did not have neurological facilities.
You might ask, why wasn’t the injured sent to a hospital which had the necessary facility in the first place? Well you see, her uncle did not have any insurance medical card. Fees at private hospital as you know are costly and the expenses might be too much for the family to bear. Therefore the family had no choice but to send the injured to a public hospital. For this case, the family did not expect that certain facilties were not available at public hospitals.
Sad to say, that in such a time where life or death is at hand, the family was ’stranded’ in a hospital where the required facility was not available. There was also a tricky situation where once the injured was admitted to a particular hospital and if the family wanted to send the injured to another hospital, the attending doctor at the current hospital was required to call the hospital to inform of the injured’s current situation. Once the hospital accepts the injured’s condition, only then can the injured be transferred to the new hospital.
Can you imagine how much time was wasted to settle this, when at the beginning if the injured had a medical card, he or she would have been immediately sent to the best hospital available and operated on at once!
I believe I need not have not stress anymore on the importance of medical insurance. For those of you who have good health and still do not have medical insurance, go and get a medical card for yourself. Get yourself protected! For those who already have a medical card, well done! You have done something good for yourself.
[via Malaysian Insurance Blog]
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Comments
wan if you would like to know more about insurance please feel free to contact me at
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The major concern for us is the inflation rate. With this in mind, the expendiature for medical also rises. It’s definitely a good thing to be equip with before something happen.
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Irwan,
Memang kita perlukan mediacal card sekarang … Sebagai ejen saya telah menolong ramai orang berkenaan dgn bill hospotal pakar dan pampasan berada dlm wah setingggi RM 400 sehari … Feel free to emel me at
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i’m a governmet doc, and even I need medical insurance! haha
first of all, it will give me options.
second, not everything is paid for no matter how privileged I am.
I knew this back when I was a student. I was in Orthopaedic – tempat patah2 tulang tu. So this young man had a broken femur. Our doc can operate anytime, but can’t procede without buying the steel implant and nails. The kid got into accident (for sure need to repair his car/bike), have broken limb, and still have to fork out money for treatment. And this is at a government hospital, where payments are much much less than in private. Our doc figured out something in the end to help him out. I know one of the worst question a doc hates to ask is, can you afford it?
so be prepared…early
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I’m happy that I didn’t even need to pay a single cent and yet stayed in the first class room when I was admitted to the hospital in a few years back. All the costs were covered by my company. I think the cost is around RM5K. The medical insurance I have is a company’s insurance.
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My wife got a breast cancer stage 2. For your info, some medical insurances don’t cover stage 1 cancer. Please ask your insurance agent to be honest on the coverage. She did undergo surgery, chemo and radiation therapy that cost around RM22k. Luckily she had a medical insurance which cashed her RM25k for her critical illness and some amount of extra continuous daily hospitalization benefits.
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Hi,
No doubt that we need medical insurance,but in life you have to protect your income first before u have medical card b’coz u still have an option to go to goverment hospital although there are so many complaints bout the service but if you lost your income due to death or total permenant disability nobody can help u! of course medical cost can be help by goverment hospital but your income..epf socso is it enough to cover your family expenses for another maybe 20 years and what abour your debt…who is going to settle? your parent,your family,your relative,your friends…bersamamu,pejabat zakat..well think about it,ur car is worth more than u that why u buy car insurance…before u make any investment protect first -yussardi financial consultant insurance and unit trust
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recommend any good medic. insurance?
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