Be Sure Your Medical Scheme Caters for all your Needs
There are currently around ninety medical aid schemes available to South Africans and each, in turn, offers a choice of at least three or four different products. However, not all of these will be able to cater for your specific needs. In practice, this diversity of products is necessary precisely because individual cover requirements and personal finances also tend to vary quite widely.
It is a sad fact that, in recent years, affordability has become one of the major considerations for many people when purchasing private healthcare cover. This is largely due to the escalating costs of treatments in the face of incomes that have not risen in parallel. To compensate, many of the medical aid schemes have responded by restricting the extent of cover available or by reducing the maximum amounts for claims. Although such curtailed products are certainly less costly, in many cases, they may no longer cater as effectively for your health-related needs
One reasonably successful strategy has been to offer the type of cover known as a hospital plan, in which healthcare costs are only covered while the member is hospitalised, thus leaving him or her to cover any other medical expenses during the rest of the year. For young single people with good general health, it is a good option that shields them from the crippling costs of a serious accident or surgical emergency. For families, or where a member may suffer from a chronic illness, it could be a dangerously false economy.
The KeyHealth medical scheme recognises that circumstances place restrictions upon the product that you can afford, but also understands the importance of cover that caters as fully as possible for your likely needs. Our solution has been to eliminate any non-core benefits designed to boost membership and to appoint a network of designated providers to deliver quality services at more affordable prices.
In parallel, we have designed products that are sufficiently comprehensive to ensure meeting the bulk of common healthcare costs. One example is a hospital plan that also includes some valuable out-of-hospital benefits.