SHOOT: It does seem excessive to pay around a grand a month, every month, for 12 months, and suffer the occasional sniffle, and then the Medical Aid provider still wants to quibble about the few payments they pay back. You give them money and they still try to funnel their increased expenses back to their customers. It's because we're not people, human beings, but 'market share' worth a certain dollar value.
More than half of South Africa’s eight million medical aid members are either broke or fast running out of funds to cover day-to-day medical expenses.
The crunch comes as household medical expenses rise, benefits are reduced — and doctors want to charge patients a staggering 300% more.
Industry experts warned this week that even a top-end comprehensive medical aid was no longer a guarantee of adequate coverage. As early as March, they claimed, members had exhausted their medical savings, from which most out-of-hospital expenses come.
The Sunday Times has established that by mid-year: 70% of members on cheaper medical aid packages had run out of funds;
40% to 50% on middle level options had run out; and
20% on top-end executive packages had run out.
Discovery Health’s medical scheme, the largest in SA with more than two million beneficiaries, went from a loss of R287-million on “healthcare” in 2006 to making a R643-million profit in 2007 and R294-million in 2008.
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