MediSave and MediShield Life: what each one pays for, and in what order

Most people find out how MediSave and MediShield Life work from the bottom of a hospital bill, after the fact. This entry walks through the order in which a bill is settled, what each scheme is for, and the limits that decide how much of the bill lands on you.

The order a bill is settled in

A public hospital bill for a citizen in a subsidised ward is worked through in four steps.

Government subsidy is applied first, according to ward class and means-testing. This is not insurance; it is a discount on the bill.
MediShield Life pays its claimable amount after the deductible and co-insurance are worked out.
MediSave is drawn down to pay your share, up to the daily and procedure limits.
Cash covers whatever is left.

An Integrated Shield Plan replaces step two with a larger insurance layer. The order is the same.

What MediSave is

MediSave is a savings account inside your CPF, funded from a slice of your monthly contributions, that can be spent only on approved medical uses. It is yours: it earns interest, it can pay for family members, and the balance passes to your estate.

It can be used for inpatient stays, day surgery, a list of outpatient treatments — chronic disease management, some screenings and vaccinations, cancer treatment, dialysis — and for MediShield Life and Integrated Shield Plan premiums. It cannot be used for most ordinary outpatient visits, dental work outside surgery, or cosmetic procedures.

MediSave withdrawal limits

Withdrawals are capped per use so the account is not emptied by one admission.

These withdrawal limits were not re-verified in this round, which checked the MediShield Life figures only. Treat the shape as reliable and the specific amounts as needing confirmation against the CPF Board’s current page before you plan around them.

Use	Limit, indicative and unverified
Inpatient daily charge	A daily cap, higher for the first two days
Surgery	Fixed amount per procedure, from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, by complexity table
Day surgery	Procedure limit plus a daily charge
Chronic outpatient care	Annual cap of a few hundred dollars per account, with a cash co-payment
Insurance premiums	Age-banded additional withdrawal limit

The exact figures are published by the CPF Board and the Ministry of Health and are revised from time to time. Ask the hospital’s business office for the current limit applying to your procedure code before admission; the estimate they give you will show it.

What MediShield Life is

MediShield Life is the national basic hospitalisation insurance. Every citizen and permanent resident is covered for life, including those with pre-existing conditions, and premiums are drawn from MediSave. It is sized for subsidised B2 and C ward bills in public hospitals: it pays a large share of those and a small share of anything more expensive.

Cover includes inpatient stays, day surgery, and selected outpatient treatment: cancer drugs on the approved list, radiotherapy, dialysis, and a few others. It does not cover ordinary outpatient consultations, dental, maternity delivery, or cosmetic surgery.

Deductible and co-insurance

Two features decide your share of a MediShield Life claim.

The deductible is the amount you pay per policy year before the scheme pays anything. It is charged once a year, not once an admission.

Ward class or treatment	Aged 80 and below	Aged 81 and above
Class C	S$2,000	S$2,750
Class B1 or B2	S$2,500	S$3,500
Class A, including private hospitals	S$3,500	S$4,500
Day surgery	S$1,500	S$2,000
Outpatient treatment	S$500	S$500

Note that B1 and B2 share a deductible. The ward classes that behave differently everywhere else in the system behave identically here — which means the deductible is not the reason a B1 bill hurts more. The reason comes later on this page.

Co-insurance is the percentage of the claimable amount above the deductible that you still pay, and it falls as the bill grows.

Claimable amount in a policy year	Your share
First S$5,000, including the deductible	10%
Next S$5,000	5%
Above S$10,000	3%

The design intent is visible in those three rows: a small bill is mostly yours, a catastrophic one is mostly the scheme’s.

Both the deductible and co-insurance can be paid with MediSave, within the withdrawal limits above.

Claim limits

Every claim is capped twice: by a limit on the specific thing being treated, and by a ceiling on the policy year. The per-item limits people most often look up are these.

What is being claimed	Limit
Normal ward, per day	S$830
First two days of an inpatient stay	A further S$800 per day
Intensive care ward, per day	S$5,140
Psychiatric ward, per day	S$230, up to 60 days a policy year
Community hospital, rehabilitative	S$370 per day
Community hospital, sub-acute	S$570 per day
Implants	S$7,000 per treatment
Kidney dialysis	S$1,750 per month
Cancer drug treatment	S$200 to S$12,800 per month, by drug
Cancer drug services	S$4,500 per year, one primary cancer

Then the ceiling: S$200,000 per policy year, with no lifetime limit. That second half matters more than it reads. A scheme with a lifetime cap abandons you precisely when a long illness has used it up; this one resets every year for as long as you live.

Three of those rows deserve a second look.

Psychiatric care is the outlier. S$230 a day against S$830 for a normal ward, and the only line here with a hard ceiling on days — sixty a policy year. If the admission you are planning for is a psychiatric one, this is the number to plan around, and it is the least generous line in the table.

Cancer drug treatment is not one limit but a list. The range runs from S$200 to S$12,800 a month, and which end you land on depends on the specific drug, not on your diagnosis. Two people with the same cancer on different drugs can have limits sixty times apart. The Ministry of Health publishes a Cancer Drug List naming the limit for each; if you are choosing between treatments, that list is the document to read, not this table.

The first two days are deliberately front-loaded. The extra S$800 a day exists because the expensive part of most admissions is the beginning.

Why the limits matter less than the pro-ration

Here is the part that catches people, and the answer to why a B1 bill hurts when the deductible said it should not.

MediShield Life is built around subsidised Class B2 and C bills at public hospitals. Bills from anywhere else — Class A, Class B1, private hospitals, any unsubsidised treatment — are pro-rated before the limits are applied. The bill is scaled down to what it would have been in a subsidised ward, and the limits then bite on that smaller figure.

So the payout does not merely fail to keep up with a private bill. It is first reduced to a public-ward equivalent, and only then capped. Two reductions, one after the other. That is the gap an Integrated Shield Plan exists to close, and it is why people are surprised by how little the scheme covered.

Permanent residents’ bills are pro-rated too, in every ward class.

What a subsidised bill looks like

Take an uncomplicated four-night stay for surgery in a B2 ward at a public hospital, for a citizen with a mid-range means-test result.

Only one number below is assumed: the S$6,000 bill left after subsidy. Everything after it is worked out from the published deductible and co-insurance rules above, so you can follow the arithmetic rather than trust the table.

Line	Amount	Where it comes from
Bill after subsidy	S$6,000	assumed
Deductible, Class B2, under 80	S$2,500	published rate
Co-insurance, 10% band	S$250	10% of the S$2,500 that fills the first S$5,000
Co-insurance, 5% band	S$50	5% of the remaining S$1,000
Your share	S$2,800	deductible plus co-insurance
MediShield Life pays	S$3,200	the balance

Your share can be paid from MediSave within its withdrawal limits, so the cash you actually reach for is usually smaller again.

Two things worth noticing. The deductible is far and away the biggest part of your share — S$2,500 of S$2,800 — which means on a bill this size the co-insurance percentage everyone worries about is almost noise. And because the deductible is annual, a second admission in the same policy year would cost you only the co-insurance: roughly S$300 instead of S$2,800.

Run the same S$6,000 through Class A and your deductible becomes S$3,500 before any pro-ration is applied to the bill itself.

Premiums

MediShield Life premiums rise by age band and are paid automatically from MediSave. Subsidies apply for lower- and middle-income households, Pioneer and Merdeka Generation cohorts, and there are transitional supports when premiums are raised. Nobody loses cover for missing a payment; arrears are recovered later.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use my MediSave for my parents’ hospital bill?

Yes. MediSave can pay approved expenses for immediate family members — spouse, children, parents, grandparents and siblings — within the same withdrawal limits.

Why did MediShield Life pay so little of my private hospital bill?

Because it is sized for subsidised public wards. Its per-day and per-procedure limits are far below private hospital charges, and it does not scale up with the bill. Only an Integrated Shield Plan on the private tier does that.

Is the deductible charged every time I am admitted?

No. It is per policy year. If you are admitted twice in one year, the second admission’s claim starts after co-insurance only.

What happens if my MediSave runs out?

Cash, or a family member’s MediSave. For people who cannot pay, MediFund is the safety net, applied for through the hospital’s medical social worker.

Check also

Integrated Shield Plans in Singapore, compared — the layer that sits on top of MediShield Life
Private hospital bill estimates in Singapore — the bills MediShield Life alone does not stretch to
Orthopedics hospitals in Singapore — a worked example of bills by ward class for one operation

Where this index comes from

The MediShield Life claim limits were read on 23 September 2026 from the Ministry of Health’s benefits page, which dates itself 3 June 2026. The deductible and co-insurance figures, and the pro-ration rule, are from the ministry’s page on making a claim, dated 1 June 2026. Those figures are recorded against their pages so a later check can say which have moved.

The claim limits quoted are a selection: the lines people most often look up, not the full schedule. Surgical procedures in particular are graded across seven tables by complexity, and cancer drug limits are set per drug on a separate list. If your question is about a specific operation or a specific drug, the ministry’s own tables are the document to read.

The MediSave withdrawal limits were not re-verified in this round and are marked as such in the table above. The settlement order and the worked example follow from the rules on this page; the worked example assumes only the bill size, and the hospital’s financial counselling estimate is what gives you the real one for your case.