Health care or heck care?

It looked so good on paper when our health ‘big bro’ made changes to our mediShield policies to increase claim limits (2013 Enhanced MS Scheme) and to cover those with existing illness and previously not insured (2015 MSlife).

These changes gave insurers great opportunities to increase their premiums. Now my insurance premium has increased by a wobbling 83% (even after I’d downgraded my health plan from A to B).

Our ‘big bro’ only helps to pay small portion of this increase for first 5 years in reducing subsided amount while I have to pay the increase for life. Such changes to our medical health care scheme are treating just the symptoms and not real roots of the problem of escalating health care and medical costs.

I could not accept how our insurance policies could be changed by someone when they were signed with agreed terms and premiums payable decades ago. When ‘powerful’ people do ‘wonderful’ things to gain brownie points, I could do nothing but sulk every year and feel hapless when I need to pay my dues. Sigh! 

 

No way in and no way out

Dear Uncle TOM,

You may say you have aged 5 years as you face many daily challenges and problems in your job. But in reality, you face one daily problem less of jostling with thousands of commuters everyday to get into overly-packed cabins with little breathing space and then got stuck inside due to disruptions.

Whether these problems are technological, structural, systemic or deep-seated cultural in nature, they have to be fixed ASAP. Everyday I fear taking the service during peak hours which has the culture of breaking down without warning.    

By now, you should be fully aware that the culture of putting military men as top management inside this key organization is not working. Critical works were not done and it took more than one year to discover this from bad weather and “climate change”. The culture of “sleeping in the job” needs to be changed too!

After more than 5 years trying to fix the many problems, I see no light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon. I just hope that you wake up and come to your senses to run parallel bus services to all lines so as to give commuters like me an alternative to go from point A to B on time during rush hours. Please give an alternative to commuters.

From a frustrated commuter