Save now for health care in retirement

Ensuring you will have cover for your medical needs during retirement should form a substantial part of your long-term financial planning, Anthea Towert says. This is because you need to provide for higher healthcare costs when you are older.

Towert says that it does not make sense to join a medical scheme option that provides more benefits than you need before you need them, because the contributions you pay for the benefits you do not use could be put to better use to provide for more comprehensive cover in your later years.

As a medical scheme member, you should review and adjust your benefits regularly, based on your needs, and set aside, in some sort of savings vehicle, any surplus funds generated by choosing a less comprehensive, and thus cheaper, benefit option, she says.

You could use the surplus funds to make additional contributions to a retirement fund or retirement annuity or open a savings account, Towert says.

Then in retirement, when your income may not be sufficient to cover what are likely to be higher healthcare needs, you can access these savings to pay for more comprehensive cover.

You may need the help of an accredited healthcare adviser who has special knowledge, to make informed decisions about your healthcare needs, Towert says. the options of a single scheme. This would reduce costs.

Regulated tariffs, which is the only way in which healthcare costs can be controlled, Towert says.

All medical schemes could be required to provide a package of basic benefits that is priced across all the options in each scheme and risk-equalised across all schemes, Towert says.

Schemes could then structure top-up benefits to suit the life stages of their members: young, single people, families and older people. This would be more cost-effective than the current structure and would prevent older people from having to compromise on their medical care, Towert says.