Dictionary: CareShield Life · KKH DCD · EIPIC · EIPIC-P
What MediShield Life is, in plain words
MediShield Life is health insurance run by the government. MOH says it “protects all Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents against large medical bills for life, regardless of age or pre-existing conditions”.
The premium, the yearly price of the cover, can be paid from MediSave. MediSave is the part of your Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings kept for medical bills. The CPF Board, which runs your CPF account, also says that “No one needs to worry about losing their MediShield Life coverage because they are unable to afford the premiums.”
It is designed around subsidised care in public hospitals. CPF Board says the payouts are “designed to cover subsidised bills incurred by you in Class B2/C wards and subsidised outpatient treatments/day surgery at public hospitals”. B2 and C are the government-subsidised ward classes, where the government pays part of the bill. Day surgery is an operation where your child goes home the same day. A bill in a higher ward class or a private hospital is pro-rated, meaning scaled down before the payout is worked out. So are bills for Permanent Residents.
Two other names get mixed up with it. CareShield Life is a different scheme. A 2021 government reply in Parliament describes it as “basic financial support in the event of severe disability”. For what it means when your child is an adult, read our guide to CareShield Life and your disabled adult child. An Integrated Shield Plan, or IP, is a private insurance plan that sits on top of MediShield Life and adds more cover. The IP is the part a private insurer decides on.
Does autism make the premium higher?
No, not on its own. In MOH’s words, “Developmental conditions such as Down Syndrome and Autism alone do not have Additional Premiums imposed on them.”
Additional Premiums are an extra 30% on top of the usual premium, paid for the first 10 years, by people with a serious condition on MOH’s list. MOH’s list of serious pre-existing conditions includes cancer, serious heart and kidney disease, and serious congenital conditions, meaning conditions a child is born with, such as congenital heart disease. Autism is not on it, and neither is Down syndrome.
There is one case where Additional Premiums can apply to an autistic child. MOH says that if the child also has a serious condition, “such as heart or kidney disease”, Additional Premiums apply “based on these medical conditions”. The charge follows the other condition, not the autism.
You do not have to declare the diagnosis to anyone for this. MOH says no medical reports are needed, because CPF Board takes the conditions that count from government and hospital records.
MOH has said the same since before MediShield Life began. Answering a question in Parliament in January 2015, MOH’s Minister of State said “the mere existence of autism on its own is not the basis for imposing Additional Premiums”.
You may come across an MOH reply from December 2010 saying MediShield covered autistic children for “all non-autism related illnesses”. That was the older MediShield scheme, which could leave people out because of pre-existing conditions. MediShield Life, which replaced it, covers everyone.
What MediShield Life pays for, bill by bill
Here are five bills a family with an autistic child may face, where MediShield Life stands on each, and where to look when the answer is no.
Two terms first. A claim limit is the most MediShield Life pays for one part of a bill, such as one day in the ward. A policy year is the yearly cycle the cover runs on. The hospital section below explains both with figures.
| The bill | MediShield Life? | Why | Also look at |
|---|---|---|---|
| A hospital stay in a subsidised ward, for an illness or injury | Yes, within claim limits | MAS says there is no difference in national scheme cover between autistic people and anyone else | MediSave for the deductible and co-insurance, the parts you pay yourself |
| A stay in a psychiatric ward, the hospital ward for mental health care | Yes, within claim limits | Psychiatric ward stays have their own daily claim limit, for up to 60 days a policy year | The hospital’s medical social worker if the bill is still too much |
| Set costly outpatient treatments, such as kidney dialysis | Yes, if on CPF Board’s list | CPF Board publishes the outpatient treatments MediShield Life pays for, each with a claim limit | Ask the hospital whether the treatment is on the list |
| An autism assessment | No | It is not on CPF Board’s list of outpatient treatments, as of October 2026 | The subsidised rate for a referred assessment at a public hospital |
| Speech therapy, occupational therapy or early intervention | No | None of them is on CPF Board’s list of outpatient treatments, as of October 2026 | Early intervention subsidies (EIPIC or EIPIC-P), which depend on household income |
Use the table to decide what to ask, not as a promise about one bill. The full outpatient list is on CPF Board’s page on what MediShield Life covers. It names treatments such as dialysis, cancer drugs and radiotherapy, which treats cancer with radiation.
Autism is not on CPF Board’s list of standard exclusions either, the treatments MediShield Life never pays for. That list names things like cosmetic surgery, vaccinations and most dental work.
When your child is admitted to hospital
A hospital stay is where MediShield Life does its real work. Tell the hospital you want to claim from MediShield Life, then follow the steps it gives you.
CPF Board breaks the payout into three parts. Each one decides how much of the bill is left for you.
- The claim limit. The most MediShield Life pays for each part of the bill, such as each day in the ward. You pay anything above it.
- The deductible. A fixed amount you pay first, before the payout starts. You pay it only once in each policy year.
- The co-insurance. A share of the rest that you pay, from 10% down to 3%. The bigger the bill, the smaller the share.
As of October 2026, for stays from 1 June 2026, the claim limit for a normal ward is up to S$830 a day, with an extra S$800 a day for the first two days. So each of the first two days can be claimed up to S$1,630. A psychiatric ward stay is up to S$230 a day, for up to 60 days a policy year. These daily limits include meals, medicine, doctors’ fees and tests.
Across a policy year, MediShield Life pays up to S$200,000. There is no lifetime limit, so no cap on what it pays over your child’s whole life. MOH said in October 2024 that the new limits aim to fully cover nine in ten subsidised hospital bills, and that you can use MediSave for the deductible and co-insurance.
Why a private Shield plan can say no
This is where a “no” can come from, and it is about a different product. MediShield Life is the national scheme. An Integrated Shield Plan is optional private insurance on top of it.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is the agency that licenses and sets the rules for insurers. In July 2021, the minister in charge of MAS answered a question in Parliament on insurance for people with autism and mental health conditions. You can read the full MAS reply on autism and insurance. It said private insurers look at each customer’s medical history. They “may accept or decline an application, or adjust the premiums or coverage”.
The reply said insurers have to base this on evidence, and named it: “autistic persons often experience co-occurring conditions and that hospitalisation rates among them are typically higher”. A co-occurring condition is a second condition a person has at the same time.
So a private insurer can decline your child, charge more, or cover less, for example by leaving a condition out. MAS expects insurers to assess each application carefully and explain the outcome clearly, so ask the insurer for its reason.
None of this touches MediShield Life. In January 2015, before MediShield Life began, MOH told Parliament that people with an IP would keep MediShield Life cover “for life, as well as coverage for any pre-existing conditions, even if these conditions were excluded from their IP coverage”.
Who pays the bills MediShield Life does not
For the assessment, the main help is the subsidised rate at a public hospital, such as KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH). KKH gives Citizens and Permanent Residents that rate on certain referrals, for example from a polyclinic, a public clinic for everyday health care. For the team there, see our entry on KKH’s Department of Child Development. What you pay after the subsidy is in our guide to autism assessment costs.
For therapy, the main route is early intervention, meaning therapy and learning support started while a child is young. EIPIC, the Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Children, runs at government-funded centres. EIPIC-P is a subsidy for children at selected private centres. Both subsidies are means-tested, meaning what you pay depends on household income. Who can join and how to enrol is in our guide to EIPIC eligibility, cost and enrolment.
MediSave is the other name to know. It pays MediShield Life premiums and some medical bills, within limits. What it can and cannot pay for is in our guide to using MediSave after an autism diagnosis.
If a bill is still too much after subsidies, MediShield Life and MediSave, ask the medical social workers at the hospital where your child was treated. They are the hospital staff who help families find ways to pay, and the way into MediFund, which MOH’s MediFund page calls “a safety net for Singaporeans who face financial difficulties with their remaining bills after Government subsidies, insurance and MediSave”. MOH says they will also look at other ways to pay with you.
Your next step
Log in to the CPF website and open your Healthcare dashboard, the page that shows your health scheme details. CPF Board’s page on MediShield Life premiums points to its “Coverage and premium details” section for your MediShield Life premiums. Start there to see the cover and what it costs.
Then, for a bill MediShield Life will not pay, read our guide to financial assistance for special needs in Singapore. It sets out the other schemes, one by one.