Health Insurance and Benefits in Singapore Internal

What are Singapore’s statutory health benefits, and what do they cover?

Contributions to the Central Provident Fund (CPF) partially go toward a Medisave account that can be used to pay for medical care, such as hospitalization or day surgery. For more information on Medisave, please see this website.

MediShield Life is an additional scheme administered by the government that provides coverage for large hospital bills and expensive outpatient treatments such as dialysis or chemotherapy. All Singapore citizens and permanent residents are eligible for MediShield Life. For more information on MediShield Life, please see this website.

Please see here for more information on healthcare schemes and subsidies in Singapore.

What health benefits do most employers offer?

Employers in Singapore must cover the cost of the medical practitioner (consultation fees only) confirming an employee’s sick leave where the employee has served a period of at least 3 months, but apart from that, there is no statutory obligation to provide health benefits.

It is common practice for employers to offer private health insurance through a group plan. This encompasses a medical component and a life and accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) component. Standard medical coverage will include hospitalization, inpatient and outpatient medical services, certain specialist treatments and dental. Standard life and AD&D coverage will specify a lump sum payment in the event of death or based on the specific AD&D scenario.  

It is not common to cover dependents, but will be deemed more favorable to employees and increase the competitiveness of the employer. 

How does an employee’s salary or level of seniority affect what benefits employers offer them?

Employers are free to offer supplemental benefits to supported employees above the statutory minimums. In this regard, employers can choose to offer more generous supplemental benefits to more senior employees. The decision to offer supplemental benefits based on seniority is up to your discretion.

What does Velocity Global’s MSH Plus plan offer? 

The MSH Basic Plus and Standard Plus medical plans are designed for local nationals to use as top-up coverage to their country's national health system. The Basic Plus and Standard Plus plans have international coverage based on the area of enrollment (2 or 3). Benefits include inpatient, outpatient, maternity, wellness, dental, vision, travel emergency, and EAP. Overall annual plan coverage is provided up to a limit of US$1 million. Unexpected illness or injury is covered on a worldwide basis, regardless of the subscribed geographic zone of cover. 

The MSH Basic Plus and Standard Plus plans use co-insurance instead of a co-payment. This change has two important benefits for employees:

• It enables outpatient direct billing, which significantly reduces the need for employees to file claims
• It makes high-utilization, low cost benefits more accessible