Everything About MediSave Care, The Scheme That Lets You Withdraw Up To $200 Cash Per Month

For the longest time ever, you thought that the only way you can actually withdraw money from your CPF accounts is through three different ways:

• Empty it in one shot to buy an HDB flat
• Wait until you’re 67 years old and see how much you can get after subtracting the minimum amount, then getting monthly payouts
• Someone died and you were nominated to get their CPF monies

Yet from 1 Oct 2020, there’s going to be a fourth way to get some money out of your account in cold hard cash.

The catch?

You’ll need to have a serious medical problem.

Everything About MediSave Care, The Scheme That Helps Pay For Long-Term Care

According to CNA, the MediSave Care will kick in on 1 Oct 2020.

Basically, what it does is to let Singaporeans, who need the money for long-term medical care, to withdraw from their MediSave accounts to offset the fees for long-term care.

Only Singaporeans aged 30 and above who are severely disabled can make use of the scheme.

Severely disabled is described as a person needing help in at least 3 areas of daily living:

• eating
• getting dressed
• using the toilet
• bathing
• moving or walking around
• getting from the bed to a chair or vice versa

What Exactly Is Long-Term Care?

According to MOH’s definition, long-term care is “the personal and medical care needed if you become disabled due to age or adverse health condition”.

Simply put, imagine you suffer from a stroke. Maybe because your family needs to work to get money home, they have to put you at a centre during the day to be taken care of.

So the amount of money they spend on getting you to the centre to either make friends or undergo rehabilitation is considered long-term care.

Withdraw Up To $200 Per Month

The maximum cap for withdrawal is $200 per month or $2,400 per year.

But you cannot suka-suka (anyhowly) determine how much you want to take out.

Depending on your MediSave account balance, the maximum amount of cash you can withdraw differs:

But that doesn’t mean you can take this chance to empty out your account.

There still needs to be a minimum sum of $5,000 within just in case of other medical expenses like hospitalisation or selected outpatient treatments.

What If I Don’t Have Enough?

Similar to the CareShield Life plan, you can choose to draw the required amount from your spouse’s MediSave account if you do not have enough money to draw.

Just take note that no matter whether you’re taking from one, or two accounts, the maximum limit of withdrawal is capped at $200 per month.

How To Withdraw

For people who want to withdraw from their MediSave accounts, application for claims will start from 1 Oct 2020.

You’ll have to be assessed by a MOH-accredited severe disability assessor (so they know you’re not pretending to get more money) and submit the scheme application to the Agency for Integrated Care.

You can check out MOH’s landing page for MediSave Care here for more information nearer to 1 Oct.

Read Also: Compulsory Insurance For S’poreans Aged 30 to 40, Also Kicking In On 1 Oct