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.
