Medical Aid

Not another darn unpaid medical aid bill. Why do I pay my premiums? I thought I was covered in full! Sound familiar? Trust me I know the feeling. I recently had a few “Not paid by your medical aid provider” bills landing up in my own mail box. I’m not a big proponent of pushing products, but when I find something I feel is absolutely necessary to include in your own insurance portfolio I’m going to mention it.  If I didn’t I would be doing our clientèle a major disservice. So what insurance product is so important that it requires a full blog post mention and an sms? It’s medical aid top up cover and I strongly believe nowadays you can’t afford not to own a policy like this. Why top up your medical aid? It’s simple really. The cost of private health care is sky rocketing and as a result medical aid schemes are covering less and less of the expenses associated with in hospital procedures. Have you noticed that your premiums are going up while your coverage is staying level – or in some cases –coming down? That means that the likelihood of you receiving a bill in ...

Private healthcare costs money and if you belong to a medical scheme in South Africa you understand what I am talking about! You pay your premiums diligently each and every month, but have you given any thought to how a medical aid scheme actually works? In this blog post I am going to cover a few important basics you ought to really know whether you belong to a scheme or are thinking of joining one. Medical aid plans or health insurance like any other form of insurance is a form of collectivism. “A form of what?” I hear you say. It’s sounds like Greek, but let me explain. It simply means people collectively pool their risk. In the case of medical aid schemes, we pool our risk against the very real likelihood of incurring medical expenses that we would otherwise find difficult to pay out of our own pocket (Any idea how much a stay in a private hospital will set you back nowadays?) It’s strength in numbers  – that is the key in this formula. The premiums (money you contribute) for your healthcare plan each and every month gets pooled with all the other member contributions of the medical ...