PWS treatment in Singapore and insurance

[blueice99]

We recently moved to Singapore from U.S. Our 16 month old daughter has port wine stains on her left face, neck, back and left arm. She has completed four lasor treatments in the U.S. and need to continue the therapy in Singapore. Could anyone recommend any good doctors here?

I talked to our current insurance carrier in Singapore and they told me they might not cover the lasor treatment because it is considered as cosmetic. Does anyone know any insurance in Singapore cover the treatment for port wine stain?

Thank you so much!

[missy]

If you do a search, there are a few threads on Singapore.

http://174.120.2.174/board/search.php?searchid=114833

There are a couple of families on the forum that are there.

If you'd like, talk to our insurance expert, Basia: http://birthmark.org/experts.php

Missy

[Charlotte's Dad]

Hi Blueice99,
Welcome to Singapore! You may have seen from the posts Missy directed you to, that we too live in Singapore and have a daughter with a PWS on her face (on her left cheek). Charlotte is now three years old and has had approximately 15 treatments to date. We are originally from Australia but our daughter and her twin sister were born in Hong Kong. We started laser treatment there when Charlotte was very young and she had 8 or 9 treatments before we moved to Singapore when she was 18 months old. For various reasons, we decided to continue having treatment in Hong Kong despite the inconvenience of having to travel there every two to three months (including whilst pregnant with our fourth child and then with a nursing infant!). There are a couple of doctors here in Singapore who do treat PWS with the VBeam Perfecta laser, however one of them cannot do so under GA.
As we elected to have Charlotte's PWS treated in Hong Kong our insurance company will not cover the cost. Unfortunately I can't provide any advice on whether any insurance companies will cover the cost of treatment in Singapore.
All the best with settling in to your new life in Singapore. Living on such a small island, we may very well see you out and about soon!
Charlotte's mum

[missy]

Hey, you guys!!

Hope Charlotte (and the rest of you too) is doing well these days! Thanks for coming by and helping out!

Missy

[blueice99]

Thank you, missy and Charlotte's mum.

We visited Dr. Tay Kwang Yong at Changi General Hospital yesterday. I feel he is pretty good expect he has an old Vbeam, not perfecta. Will this make any difference? If not, I will just stick with him.

I am still struggling with the insurance. I convinced our new insuracne carrier in Singapore that laser treatment for PWS is not for cosmetic. However they raised another issue that my daughter has already had PWS when we bought the insurance, so they won't cover it! Then I would never get any insurance for my poor baby! What should I do? Is there any insurance that would cover congenital disease? Anybody has any suggestion?