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What health insurance do you have and how much do you pay?

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  1. #11

    I should've changed the title to: What percentage of your gross annual income do you pay in healthcare?

    Thanks all for the replies.

    New thread with poll created.

    Last edited by periphery831; 09-05-2020 at 03:22 AM.

  2. #12

    Join Date
    Jun 2011
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    Great thread! If one is not happy with the company insurance policy which is of the standard Bupa type what do you guys recommend to add on to get better cover for the really expensive stuff?

    For example these "standard" employement insurances pays for max 500-600 HKD for visiting a GP and 800-1000 for specialist. This is fine by my, I'm not so worried to potentially pay a few hundred out of pocket. I'm more thinking if I need major surgery and that costs 700k HKD and my coverage is only up to 100-150k HKD.

    What kind of insurance should I go for to top up the coverage for the really expensive medical issues and how much does it cost?


  3. #13

    Join Date
    May 2019
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    783

    I don't have health insurance. The only time I paid for it myself I had it for a year and thought it was a scam. Felt like very little was covered on it, that the process of claiming was pretty convoluted, and for anything even semi serious we ended up at a public hospital anyway. When the wife worked her insurance covered clinic visits, that was good.

    Serious quesiton: what would be the most common use for private health care here? Is it more to insure against rarer conditions that the public system might not deal with? To skip waiting times for more minor issues?


  4. #14

    Join Date
    Jan 2015
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kowloon72:
    I don't have health insurance. The only time I paid for it myself I had it for a year and thought it was a scam. Felt like very little was covered on it, that the process of claiming was pretty convoluted, and for anything even semi serious we ended up at a public hospital anyway. When the wife worked her insurance covered clinic visits, that was good.

    Serious quesiton: what would be the most common use for private health care here? Is it more to insure against rarer conditions that the public system might not deal with? To skip waiting times for more minor issues?
    The best example in my family is repeated physio visits for injuries. If you need to go 3x a week for a couple of weeks that's $8000 or so in total fees, so if private health covered 80% (which ours did) it's about 1/3 the annual premium right there
    Kowloon72 and z754103 like this.

  5. #15

    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kowloon72:
    I don't have health insurance. The only time I paid for it myself I had it for a year and thought it was a scam. Felt like very little was covered on it, that the process of claiming was pretty convoluted, and for anything even semi serious we ended up at a public hospital anyway. When the wife worked her insurance covered clinic visits, that was good.

    Serious quesiton: what would be the most common use for private health care here? Is it more to insure against rarer conditions that the public system might not deal with? To skip waiting times for more minor issues?
    Mostly to skip waiting times. I had surgery paid for by my private insurance and the waiting time for an MRI to check if i needed surgery at a public hospital would have been over a year, because it wasn't an urgent condition. With private insurance I had an MRI done within a few days and the surgery booked within 3 weeks or so.

    I don't have outpatient cover, because that would add about 10 times the cost of a visit to a clinic per year to the insurance cost. Physio after my surgery was covered at 100% though
    Kowloon72, hongkong7 and spode like this.

  6. #16

    Join Date
    May 2019
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    783

    Thanks to both. Food for thought.


  7. #17

    I asked around my company which has no health insurance cover and every single person (around 12 or so) said they had no cover. :/


  8. #18

    Join Date
    May 2019
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    783
    Quote Originally Posted by periphery831:
    I asked around my company which has no health insurance cover and every single person (around 12 or so) said they had no cover. :/
    I mean, any time one of my kids has had something even semi serious, we were at a private clinic in the morning and admitted to a public hospital by noon.

    A close colleague had a cancer scare last year and the waiting times for tets and scans were all very short.

    I sorted a trapped nerve through the public system. That took a long time, but I wasn't in great pain so it didn't bother me.

    Using private clinics for initial diagnosis and then the public system for extended/emergency treatment is a pretty viable option I think if you can endure the bedside manner and longer waits for non emergency procedures.

  9. #19

    Join Date
    Feb 2009
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    8,280
    Quote Originally Posted by Peaky:
    Yeah it was itemised as something starting with Bupa... Can't imagine what else it would have represented. Is it unusual to be taxed on a benefit in kind here? Only been through one tax cycle so far and didn't really question anything due to the novelty of not being asked to hand over half my salary to the taxman
    I think is correct. My company paid my families gold medical cover for 12 years and I never had to pay tax on this, never saw it on the IR56B tax form declaring my income. Even HK local people, many companies pay a more modest level of insurance (my company had an AIA package for all emloyees) and again its not something that had to pay tax on at the end of the year. I think you got screwed.

    School allowance was another story. My company also paid international school fees $350k per year for 2 kids which I was very grateful for, but it used to shit me off that this was shown on my tax return and I had to pay tax on this which the tax alone costs more than a normal school back home in Australia

  10. #20

    Join Date
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    This is an interesting one. Many of us come from countries where private healthcare isn't really considered and everyone sticks to the public system and others come from countries (namely the USA) where a public healthcare system isn't an option.

    We then are in HK where it has a public healthcare system where the costs are minimal but many expats opt for private healthcare.

    My previous company provided us with very limited private healthcare services (basically coverage of HKD200, then HKD400, to visit a doctor). I didn't really use it much, until I had a severe injury, when I was out of pocket quite a bit for various check ups etc.

    My present company we are on a proper international healthcare package and its great, pretty much no limits.

    For the family we have opted for private healthcare. Its not cheap, but we know that we can get treatment at a private clinic. We are in the process of renewing and the premium is going up 11%. I asked the broker to check the cost with other providers, and I have to say they are even more expensive for a comparable package.

    I do think a lot of it does come down the personal choice and where you want to spend your money. We've decided we want to spend our money on a somewhat expensive medical insurance package, but it makes us sleep a bit easier at night.

    shri and bdw like this.