Cost of medical aid deters spread
The number of medical-scheme beneficiaries remained virtually unchanged for the past seven years with high unemployment and lack of government intervention said to be keeping membership out of reach of a growing slice of the population.
The number of medical-scheme beneficiaries remained virtually unchanged for the past seven years with high unemployment and lack of government intervention said to be keeping membership out of reach of a growing slice of the population.
The trend is revealed in the 2017/2018 Council for Medical Schemes annual report, tabled in parliament last week. There were 8.87-million medicalscheme beneficiaries in 2017, compared with 8.53-million in 2011 while the country’s population grew from 51.55-million to 56.84-million, according to Stats SA. The percentage of the population covered by medical schemes fell from 16.55% to 15.61% in this period.
“The lack of growth in medical scheme membership indicates its lack of affordability,” said Wits University professor Alex van den Heever.
The declining proportion of the population belonging to medical schemes reflected the poor state of the economy and the government’s failure to take steps to make membership more affordable, he said.
“There is a strong correlation between registered taxpayers and the number of principal members of medical schemes: anyone with a precarious income won’t join,” he said.
“The government has sat on its hands. It has done nothing to enhance coverage, nor has it done anything to regulate costs.
The council once again drew attention to the remuneration of medical-scheme trustees and principal officers, an issue it has flagged for several years.
It had proposed in the draft Medical Schemes Amendment Bill that it publish parameters for the pay of scheme officials, said spokesperson Grace Khoza.
Medical schemes are headed by principal officers, appointed and overseen by boards of trustees. The report includes details of remuneration at all 80 SA schemes. The Discovery Health Medical Scheme (DHMS) principal officer, Nozipho Sangweni, was the most generously rewarded, at R5.13m.
DHMS remuneration committee chair David King said it was “critical that the scheme is able to attract and retain executives of sufficient calibre to carry out the complex tasks involved in managing the scheme and its contractual relationships”.