Cost of premature baby....medical treatment..-

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Below is a write up about a low income family with a premature baby.

1. Baby born in 34th week normal gestation is are 40 weeks..
2. Baby goes to natal intensive care for 3 weeks (incubator?)
3. Total bil is $55k
4. Subsidised bill is $14K
5 Couple apply for medical finanscial aid
6. Rejected because bank account have 15k
7. Was asked to empty Medisave account to pay for 70% of the bill and remainder
from bank account.

Okay th couple situation is manageable. At least they did not have to go into medical debt to pay for bill. While the family is low income and face some financial strain it was not disastrous for them. Without a universal healthcare system unfortunately babies are left out and the burden falls on the family. You can see the medical bill is $55k is not cheap for a premature baby which is not uncommon
medlical condition ....actually this woman should consider herself lucky the situation did not cripple her financially permanently.

Many Singaporeans blur blur g and have babies but dunno if baby need medical treatment it can turn out financially disastrous due to various lapses in the system. Like I always advice best not to have children unless you are quite rich otherwise you only have yourself to blame when you fail into severe strain dont expect govt to help you with medical bills for baby. Like my friend who end up in dire straits making a few mistakes:

1. Sign up for maternity package at Thomson Medical thinking package $2K plus is affordable.going to private hospital is first mistake. Later you see why.

2 Baby was born. Doctors came to check found anormaly i heart something more serious than hole in heart.

3, Transfer to KK intensive care because private hospital did not have surgeon for baby heart surgery..

4. Once you are transfer from private hospital, you are not eligible to class C but become zero subsidy private patient,

5. Try to downgrade to class C but disqualified because cannot meet low income criteria.
.
6. Baby had surgery for heart stay in hospital 3 months plus.

7. Total bill $200K.

8. Medisave $20K wiped out. Put on medical debt of $180k to pay by instalment.

9. 2008 fiancial crisis struck. My friend who was working in bank got retrenched.

10. He took up lower paying job. Struggle to pay both home mortgage and this medical debt.
Hospital send debt collectors to call him to chase for payment every month.

11. He end up selling his home and move back to stay in his parents 4 room flat. No more home mortgage to service but hospital debt collectors still chasing him every month to pay.

One lesson to learn is govt keep asking you to have more babies to feed to their economy and maintain theier econmzic engine but once baby born sick you can bew left in very
desperate financial state that is why it is best not to have children in Singapore.

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http://therealsingapore.com/content/...ancial-support

On 1st September 2013, my wife & I welcomed our newborn son to this world at KK Hospital. He was unfortunately born at 34 weeks & weight 1.25kg. He was put in the Natal Intensive Care Unit for 3 weeks which the hospital then transferred him to Special Care Nursery for another 3 weeks stay. The medical bills shot up to an amount of $14,000 after subsidy from the original bill size of $55,000.

We were approached by a senior medical social worker (Phyllis Wong) from the hospital to assist us in the huge bill size. We were told to submit all relevant documents to declare our total household income including both of our latest "Bank Statement". If application is successful we will receive further financial support from the government. We were so thankful at that point of time as we came from a low mid household income.*

A week later, when we received news from the medical social worker all hopes are gone. We were told that our total household income is totally eligible for further financial assistance but because we have a savings amount of $15,000 in our bank account we will not be eligible for further financial support instead. Even if we appeal on this, our appeal will most likely get rejected because of the amount of money we have in the bank. We were told that we will need to pay the balance amount after deduction from our Medisave. We were also told that we could pay by installments if we wanted to.

We argued for unfairness as the amount of money in our savings got nothing to do with eligibility. Eligibility should solely be based on our household income. Savings is what we strive so hard to set aside for the future. Our new BTO 4 room flat is reaching completion and we will need our savings for furniture too. Upon hearing our plead the medical social worker told us to pay installments for all our furniture which she said could lessen the financial load. How could installments possibly be the solution out? We barely make $3,500 for our household income. Just how much installments can we afford to pay every month? What about food? Don't our family need to eat? We still have a 4 year old son to support.
The response from the medical social worker is totally unacceptable.

My dear Singaporeans & readers, I hope you can see my point and spread this. We do have a reasonable amount if Medisave in our CPF account to pay 70% of the bill. But I want to remind everyone that Medisave money didn't come from the sky. We work our lives everyday through thick and thin for that money. Medisave is still cold hard cash, if anything will to happen to my newborn son which need hospital medical attention I still can use it to pay his bills. Setting the amount of money in our bank savings as a criteria for eligibility for further financial support is just not fair at all.*

When the government gives out GST packages do they check our bank account and tell us you are not eligible because you have enough money in your bank account?

Does the government really want us to spend away every single cent we have before they start to provide us with financial support?

This medical social worker is just heartless to speak like that. Shouldn't they be the ones to show compassion to offer help instead of telling people who need help to go away?

Abandoned Citizen*


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