As the days pass more and more medical aids launch their 2017 plans and rates.
In response to the various replies to this thread a bit of history of medical aids in SA.
The 80's were an easy era - if you worked for one of the many parastals you had easy access to medical aid. Is was typical of the era to have to choose between two plans : 80% or 100%. The 80% plan was cheaper and gave you full hospital cover but only 80% cover for "brille-pille-en-tanne" (all those out of hospital expenses). If you were one of the lucky few you could afford the 100% plan that covered everything in full.
Times moved on, and by the mid 80's the parastatels started shrinking ... or should I rather say private medical aids started gaining momentum.
Adrian Gore -
https://www.discovery.co.za/portal/i...drian-gore-bio" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - will forever be remembered as the person that introduced SA to the world of "healthy living" (Vitality) and a medical aid with a savings plan.
By 1996 Discovery started growing aggresively. At the time their sales pitch was the savings plan .. and NOT the medical part of it, but the fact that you could save as much money as you wanted, interest at near prime, and tax free .... At the time some people were saving a few thousand rand a month in this savings plan - frankly no other investment scheme could compete. By 1998 or 1999 SARS picked up on this and got the Medical Aid Board to limit the savings amount to a maximum of 25% of the total premium. THIS caused some havoc !! Fact is that on a cheaper plan 25% simply does not put enough money aside for the out of hospital items ....
By now some other medical aids started playing catch-up .....
Now you had three broad options :
- 100% type plan that covered you in full - but getting way too expensive
- the Discovery type "savings plan" - where some of your money is put aside for the out of hospital expenses.
- Other medical aids introduced plans with "day-to-day" cover. The technical difference is that this amount does NOT transfer as with a savings plan, thus not limited by the 25% rule. In theory these plans offer more "total" cover that savings plans .... It typically offers a set max for glasses, a set max for dental, a set max for GP, etc etc ... Now IF you had the perfect combination of dental, optical, GP, etc visits then you would get more out of these plans .... Back on planet earth you have a bad optical year followed by a bad dental year ... and you never fully use the distributed cover.
Now Bonitas has gone as far as providing plans that give both "savings" AND "day-to-day" cover.
In the end it is near impossible to do a real side by side comparison of the various plans ...
Add in the various extras offered by so many of the medical aids, from logging your sports records, to movie tickets, etc etc the real issue becomes more and more clouded ....
Worth adding that the broker fee forms part of the medical premium. Thus no incentive for a broker to punt one plan over another .... well that is true for the medical part .... huge bonusses for signing new entrants to the various loyalty programmes ....
All said and done, when comparing similar cover for similar rates then the track record of the firm (their administration and payment records) is the only real decider.
This trade have totally evolved the last two decades. Going to be interesting to see what the next decade holds ....
PS - let me just say again - I am NOT a medical aid broker. Just somebody that have closely followed this industry for a few decades.
Why do I make these posts - It is scary how much money we spend on medical aid, yet very few people have a clue as to what plan they have or what cover they have ... and frankly most dont know where to start talking to their broker to figure out what they actually need.