By Liew Meow Koon

I REFER to last Thursday's letter, 'NTUC Income has portable medical plan'.

I applaud NTUC Income for its portable medical plan. I am an advocate of such plans and my company is on one.

However, I must ask why portable medical benefits have not taken off.

First, human resources professionals are operational rather than strategic when addressing this issue. They focus on short-term costs and benefits rather than long-term ones. If HR is not convinced of the worth of portable medical benefits, how can such ideas be implemented?

HR consultancies, especially those with insurance brokerage business, also do no good on this issue. When medical plans go portable, they lose their fees on group medical plans they earn from insurance companies. I attended a presentation by such a company a couple of weeks ago, and I heard this loud and clear. This company even said portable medical insurance premiums would skyrocket if everyone went portable.

Insurance companies do not help either. When one wants to go portable, pre-existing illnesses are not covered automatically. A company cannot go portable if staff with pre-existing illnesses are not covered by insurance.

The Government also does not help as much as it could. If it has a Work-Life Works! Fund, Medicare and other assistance to ensure that national initiatives succeed, why not set up a fund to cover pre-existing illnesses and any additional risks associated with insuring such staff? Pre-existing illnesses will then become a short-term phenomenon as more Singaporeans go portable at a young age, and will disappear over time.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on October 06, 2008.