Basic Healthcare Sum

According to the CPF’s definition, The Basic Healthcare Sum (BHS) is an estimate of what you need to save up for your basic subsidised healthcare needs in old age, and will be set at $49,800 from 1 January 2016 for all CPF members.

 

With effect from 1 Jan 16, the Medisave Minimum Sum of $43,500 in the CPF will be converted to a new scheme called the Basic Healthcare Sum and this would be fixed at $49,800 for life. There shall be no further increases unlike the Medisave Minimum Save when the principle of moving target was applied, ie, it can go up and up at the discretion of whoever deems fit. Hopefully this $49,800 jail house rock payment would not be raised again but there is no guarantee that this would be the case.

 

So it seems that the ransom to be paid to the govt is settled as far as the $49,800 lock up sum is concerned. But does anyone want to know why is there a need for this Basic Healthcare Sum when everyone is already covered by a Medishield Life Scheme? Is it not that the Medishield Life Scheme is to provide basic healthcare protection for the citizens, from birth to death? Why is there another need to set aside another $49,800 in the Basic Healthcare Sum to provide for basic healthcare needs? Is this not double coverage, double payment for basic healthcare protection?

 

Another question, why is this new change imposed regardless of the age of the CPF contributors? What happens is that someone at 30 or whatever age, will have to top up his Basic Healthcare Sum to $49.800. A person in his 60s, 70s, 80s or older, would also be expected to have a similar sum of $49,800 locked up. Is there anything wrong, illogical about this? Those who have passed their CPF age would have many computations of higher contributions frozen when they hit 55 or whatever the cut off point. Why is this Basic Healthcare Sum be applied retrospectively to everyone regardless of age? I hope I am wrong on this, but no qualifications on this so far.

 

Shouldn’t those who are already withdrawing their CPF savings under the older regulations be left untouched or their Basic Healthcare Sum be at $43,500 at most? What kind of thinking or reasoning is behind this? What’s wrong with collecting more money? With the Medishield Life Insurance Scheme, there should be no need for the Basic Healthcare Sum.

Let’s return to the concept and purpose of Medishield Life.  What is MediShield Life? Below is CPF’s definition:

‘MediShield Life, similar to MediShield, is an individual basic universal healthcare insurance scheme which helps to pay for large hospital bills and expensive outpatient treatments, such as dialysis and chemotherapy for cancer. It targets Class B2/C wards and subsidised treatment in public hospitals….

MediShield Life provides better protection for all Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents for life, regardless of age or health condition.’

Should not the Medishield Life protection be enough for the CPF contributors?  What the hell is this Basic Healthcare Sum for? It is definitely not another health insurance scheme and there is no mention of the benefits that it is supposed to provide. It is just like a protection money to be held at ransom.

 

Can anyone enlighten on this Basic Healthcare Sum and why should there be such a big sum of money to be retained when everyone is already covered and protected by the Medishield Life Insurance scheme?

How much more or how many more insurance schemes should the people be made to pay for? Paying Medishield Life for life not enough, still need to have $49,800 lock up for life? What are its uses and what would happen to this sum of money after the CPF contributor passes away? What kind of interest rate is this sum getting?

The Legend of Bruce Lee

The interest in the story of Ip Man and the movie Ip Man 3 led me to google for more Ip Man stories in the net. And I stumbled onto this gem, Legend of Bruce Lee, 50 episodes starring Danny Chan. There are many versions of Bruce Lee’s life done by many producers using many different actors. I rate this 50 episode serial as the best in many aspects. Though there were many dramatizations, many of the characters were real and most important is the spirit of the serial. It dealt with how a rebellious young Bruce Lee grew up in an era of racial discrimination, prejudices and western stereotyping of Asians and the Chinese people as a civilization and how he overcame these difficulties to carve a name for himself.

The serial boasts a Bruce Lee lookalike, good fighting choreography and serious dialogue on his motivation and how a young man made his dream come true despite all odds. In the course of his pursuit he broke many rules and norms and humanly imposed prohibitions. He created his own style of kung fu, Jeet Kune Do, taught foreigners kung fu that was forbidden then, broke down Hollywood’s door, western discrimination and oppression of Asians and promoted inter racial tolerance.  The serial also touched in depth Bruce Lee’s philosophy on martial arts and the need to develop martial arts as an international art form to its highest form.

His best and loyal disciples were Japanese, Filipino, black and white Americans, including Hollywood stars. He called among his friends, Mohammed Ali, James  Coburn, Steve McQueen, Chuck Norris, David Carradine, the one whom Hollywood used to steal his role as Grasshopper in the serial Kung Fu, and his closest friend/disciples in Taky Kimuira and Dan Inosanto.

Bruce Lee’s achievements in his short span of life were to kick open the doors of Hollywood for Asian actors, broke down the discrimination and stereotyping of the inscrutable, meek and talentless Asians in general and Chinese in particular, took Hong Kong’s martial art movies to a new height, brought together the martial arts of different schools and from different countries, introduced Chinese martial arts in the westernized name kung fu to the world. In short, he promoted racial understanding, integration and goodwill among the people of the world.

His other notable achievements were an undying spirit to innovate and to defy established conventions, to strive for perfection and personal growth, a never say die attitude of discipline, perseverance and hard work, all great personal virtues to be emulated.

Media Corp should acquire and screen this serial to promote racial tolerance, understanding, harmony and integration among the different ethnic groups here.  It is a serious production with very serious acting and dialogue and philosophy and the development of martial arts. Would Singaporeans be privileged to view this serial in Channel 5 other than the soap operas? It is definitely a positive change, an educational and historical production much worthy than many of those shown in Channel 5. It would definitely boost its ratings and viewership with this well produced serial.

Bruce Lee made Wing Chun and Ip Man famous and familiar names in the international arena of martial arts and movie making.

China taking a tough stand against terrorism

A new anti terrorism law has been passed by the highest legislature in China, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. This timely and necessary law is well received by countries around the world that are also facing the threats of terrorism. Unfortunately and expectedly, the USA is at their worst behavior again, attacking and criticizing China on everything, even this law against terrorism.

What are the real issues or non issues that the Americans are raising? The points being flagged by the Americans are, one, technology firms are required to help to decrypt information on terrorism if demanded by the Chinese authority. Two, there is a provision to limit the media from making reports related to terrorist attacks that are cruel or inhuman.

Why are these two provisions so difficult to the Americans that they have to react so negatively and totally dismissed the spirit and intent of the anti terrorist law?  The first objection to require technology firms to decipher information suspected of terrorist related activities is only proper and necessary. The Chinese authority is not demanding that the technology firms revealed their encryption codes but to produce the decrypted information. Why is this so difficult to comply? If the technology firms are not involved with unlawful or espionage activities they have nothing to fear. And it is only right that such demands be handled professionally. The US govt would similarly make such demands to any technology firms operating in the USA.

No foreign firm operating in any country is allowed to operate freely and not to cooperate with the local govt to tackle terrorist activities and threats.  How is this law more compromising than the sweeping American law to monitor and eavesdrop on the communications and phone conversations of its citizens and leaders, including foreign leaders?

The second objection is even more baseless. It is only decent for the mass media not to air inhuman or cruel terrorist acts and risks them being imitated or copied by other potential terrorists. The Americans themselves have banned reports or references to how they dealt with terrorists and the activities in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp.

It is time the Americans act and behave more responsibly in this war against terrorism and cooperate with other nations and not to pull the rug off the feet of countries fighting the terrorists. The American’s attack on China’s anti terrorist law is bizarre and shameful and speaks poorly on America as a world leader.

PS. I want to preempt Veritas from going tangentially off course and stick to the issue of terrorism.

SBF’s paper is about growing our own timber and protecting our own interests

The gist of the paper’s recommendation is about growing your own timber in three areas, growing the stock market, growing local enterprise and to add wings on them, growing local talent with more scholarships. In the last part, there are plenty of scholarships for foreigners, so this call must be read as fine tuning the scholarships for our children and to target them at the industries, not for foreigners to go home after a few years here.

There was also the exasperating talk about allowing more foreign workers as the restriction on foreign workers was targeted at this lower level where there was a real shortage since Singaporeans did not want such works. For some queer reasons, perhaps someone thought the need to fill up the Singapore’s equivalents of Chennai Business Park and Mumbai Financial Centre (MBFC) with foreigners should have priorlty over having more low level workers and thus the cut is at the worker’s level and not at the PME level.

The sick stock market is now spoken openly. The difficulties to raise fund from our stock market with its life hooked on life support is telling. Stock prices and trading have run to a stand still though computer trading still showed a little misleading life in the market. The reality is best felt by the businesses that found raising money is a dying stock market near impossible. How’s that for the truth?

The call for the revival of the stock market is loud and clear. GIC that is investing the people’s savings should apportion a greater percentage of its investment to support local businesses by supporting their prices in the stock market. Did someone said the CPF money belongs to the employers and not the employees? Shouldn’t the employers that are contributing to the CPF’s biggest share be looked after by the money they contributed?

But before the GIC pump in more money back into the local stock market, they better understand what is the real problem of the stock market. Why is it dying? If it is suffering from Aids, please do not try to scratch its balls. It would not help. The Aids is the killer, not the itching. Unfortunately no one wants to see the problem as it is. The elephant in the room is very difficult to notice.

Investing CPF money in other stock market is exactly like hiring foreigners instead of hiring Singaporean. Here they are spending money to grow foreign companies in foreign stock markets and neglecting our own stocks in our own market.

Similarly, giving scholarships to foreigners and not to Singaporeans achieved the same effect, growing foreign timber and neglecting our own timber.

So, would this serious paper, with so many heads putting so much effort into it, count or mean anything?  When would there be a change of mentality, to grow our own timber, to start our charity drive at home?

By the way, would they even acknowledge the problem faced by the local businesses? Would they acknowledge that the stock market is failing? Who said so? The market is the pink of health, the best market in Asia, the Number One stock market in Asia. What is the SBF talking about a moribund market?

Someone must be talking nonsense or someone must be stupid and cannot see the real stuff, or just listening to the good stuff. No problem, all is fine.

Die, die, North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb

The world woke up in fear to know that the North Koreans have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. The North Koreans are going to bomb the whole world, or at least they will bomb South Korea, Japan and the USA. Quick, get ready to invade North Korea and destroy its nuclear problem before they build the bomb.

Today’s paper front page headline yesterday read, ‘N Korea H-bomb test claim sends shivers through Asia’. Japan going to boost up its military budget and raise its military alert to Red. It is going to the UN to condemn the North Koreans.

The Today paper also had an interesting comparison on the number of nuclear test by the respective nuclear powers. USA had 1.030 tests, Soviet Union had 715 tests, France had 210 tests, UK and China had 45 each. Now how many frightening tests did the North Koreans made that are sending shivers to the world? 4!

Talk of crying wolf or telling ghost stories to frighten the children? Who is more frightening? Who has more nuclear war heads to destroy Mother Earth? The Americans have more than 7000, China got 200, the North Koreans may have none to date.

So frightening man! The Koreans are so frightening man? Talking about the unthinking that want to believe in lies and propaganda from the Americans, Japanese and the western media. And though Japan did not test any, officially, how many nuclear warheads did the Japanese possess? They have many tons of weapon grade nuclear material in their arsenal.

Who is the greater fool? Oh, wait a minute, the North Koreans is going to nuke Singapore. Believe this as your own peril. For whatever reason I dunno. One thing for sure, if the Americans and their gangsters kept labeling countries as evil and kept provoking them instead of engaging them and bringing them to work as a member of the world civilization, they will get the enemy they painted and created. It will be a self fullfiling prophecy. The USA or Japan will be the likely candidate for the North Koreans to test their nuclear weapons when cornered.

Which country has attacked another country with nuclear weapons?