30 October 2010
A caring society
Injecting $5B (care) + $50B (medical insurance) in good years is an ingenious move: (a) to "circumvent" the principle of keeping the expenditure within the limits of revenues in bad years (BL107)?; and (b) to maintain a low tax policy by squeezing the local tycoons but not the foreign companies (BL108)? Is Hong Kong becoming a welfare state?
10 October 2010
Health insurance
The age / risks banded premiums are highly commendable, similar to car insurance, which is rational and fair.
Insurance policies (e.g. life insurance), if bonded (mixed) with investment / savings and other types of unrelated policies, are usually difficult to understand, and once bonded, cannot be separated (e.g. even when the investment return is poor, the investment portion cannot be dropped, unless the entire policy is canceled).
Under the proposed legislation, please do not allow such bonding. And if bonding is unavoidable, please make it separable, and if not separable, please ensure that the contents should be decipherable (e.g. the annual investment return should be calculated against the investment portion (compound interest should also be accounted for), instead of muddling the figure against the entire policy amount including the life insurance portion).
As it now stands, the life insurance market is far from transparent. For portability, please allow carrying over the entire policy, including the top up portions. As I see it, the proposal is an ingenious way to partly privatize health service for the middle class to private insurers, in the hope that medical costs can be contained through private efforts while maintaining a public system for the poor and needy. This can only be achievable through genuine competition among a fair number of private insurers.
Many specialists have left the public system to enter private practice. This may imply higher costs for the middle class in the long run. Please consider adopting the Australian Medicare model by reasonably capping the amount a doctor may charge / claim under this voluntary insurance scheme. In so doing, consumers as a whole will have more bargaining power.
If a doctor / hospital chooses to charge more than the standard rate, some consumers may choose another doctor / hospital who charges the standard rate or less. In other words, service / equipment charges should not be standardized under the scheme, but competitive pricing be allowed. This will help control the price of medical care in the long run, which otherwise may be inadvertently fueled by similar medical insurance schemes in other countries.
Insurance policies (e.g. life insurance), if bonded (mixed) with investment / savings and other types of unrelated policies, are usually difficult to understand, and once bonded, cannot be separated (e.g. even when the investment return is poor, the investment portion cannot be dropped, unless the entire policy is canceled).
Under the proposed legislation, please do not allow such bonding. And if bonding is unavoidable, please make it separable, and if not separable, please ensure that the contents should be decipherable (e.g. the annual investment return should be calculated against the investment portion (compound interest should also be accounted for), instead of muddling the figure against the entire policy amount including the life insurance portion).
As it now stands, the life insurance market is far from transparent. For portability, please allow carrying over the entire policy, including the top up portions. As I see it, the proposal is an ingenious way to partly privatize health service for the middle class to private insurers, in the hope that medical costs can be contained through private efforts while maintaining a public system for the poor and needy. This can only be achievable through genuine competition among a fair number of private insurers.
Many specialists have left the public system to enter private practice. This may imply higher costs for the middle class in the long run. Please consider adopting the Australian Medicare model by reasonably capping the amount a doctor may charge / claim under this voluntary insurance scheme. In so doing, consumers as a whole will have more bargaining power.
If a doctor / hospital chooses to charge more than the standard rate, some consumers may choose another doctor / hospital who charges the standard rate or less. In other words, service / equipment charges should not be standardized under the scheme, but competitive pricing be allowed. This will help control the price of medical care in the long run, which otherwise may be inadvertently fueled by similar medical insurance schemes in other countries.
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