It’s indeed a tough decision to make. To ensure the premium is not too taxing on the policyholders, the insurance company would have to strike off the hospitals that are eating up too much claims. This decision is totally understandable, our private hospitals are notorious for their profiteering acts and would not hesitate to squeeze as much as possible from patients who visit them with a medical card.
It’s not surprising that medical claims eats up the highest portion of an insurance company’s profit margin. Unless of course, the insurance companies start setting up their own healthcare institutions. At least this way, they can control the cost.
There’s also a limit to how strict an insurance company’s underwriting department can get. If they become too strict, they would probably have to turn down 50% of their potential clients including people like me who eat nasi lemak for lunch and dinner. And this will hurt the economy of scale. You need big numbers for the law of probability to work.
Effective Tuesday, ING Insurance policy holders who seek treatment at eight private hospitals in the Klang Valley need to pay first, before claiming from the insurance company.
This follows failed discussions between ING and the hospitals which form the Joint Inter-Hospital Healthcare Committee (JHIC), over the past three months.
The JHIC which has been holding discussions with ING’s top management and mediated by Bank Negara, failed to reach an agreement on the new terms and conditions set by ING’s new Healthcare Service Panel Agreement (HSPA).
Since January, representatives from Pantai Medical Centre, Gleneagles Intan Medical Centre, Sunway Hospital, Assunta Hospital, Ampang Puteri Hospital, Tawakal Hospital, Prince Court Medical Centre and Damansara Specialist Centre had been holding discussions with the ING team.
JHIC chairman Dr Steven Chow said: “The failure to agree to terms in ING HSPA will likely see the insurer strike off over 600 doctors from these hospitals.
Source: Bernama
If our government hospitals are being run more efficiently, we can definitely reduce our dependency on these profit-minded private healtcare institutions.
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