The pain of health cover

What other insurance policy relentlessly goes up in price after many years of contributions without claims, is taken away when most needed and severely restricts coverage for the very contingencies for which the insurance was issued?

You will already have guessed that the subject under discussion is medical insurance, which is becoming increasingly expensive and restrictive.

No wonder medical insurance is an explosive subject in most countries. In Hong Kong, it is back on the government's agenda in part to protect citizen's interests, but in greater part because the administration fears it will have increasing difficulties financing the medical care of an ageing population.

There is some hope that after a decade and a half of prevarication, the government is moving closer to enacting something it calls a Health Protection Account, a hybrid public/private health scheme that should help ease the public health-care fiscal burden and give many Hongkongers a reasonable medical insurance cover that is affordable and does not contain the myriad exemptions found in commercial insurance policies.

These policies are riddled with get-out clauses for the insurers and use an elaborate vocabulary of weasel words which either blatantly mislead or are thoroughly unintelligible.

Here are some random examples: all medical insurers claim to offer a 'no-claims bonus'. But unlike, say, motor policies, which offer as much as 60 per cent for no claims, most medical insurers erect a ceiling of 20 per cent, with a few going beyond this miserly discount.