Private medical scheme members should brace themselves for substantial premium hikes next year, attributed to a combination of a surge in chronic conditions and young people who neglect to join medical aid.
Discovery Health Medical Scheme, which represents 57.8% of the open medical scheme market, last week warned clients to expect contribution increases ranging from 7.4% to 10.9%, depending on their plan, next year.
Half of the scheme’s members will see a rise of 8.4% n the new year, reports BusinessLIVE.
Beneficiaries with chronic conditions have swelled from 15.8% in 2008 to 33.1% this year, and CEO Adrian Gore said the rise in people with these conditions, along with investments in the latest medical technologies, was fuelling medical inflation, which outpaces headline inflation.
“The actual price of goods and services is not the problem. What we are trying to flag is the demand side. The way the law works currently, everyone pays the same rate and you can move in and out freely. But the result of that is often young people only join medical aids when they are sick. The net result is that over time, the population you cover gets older and sicker,” Gore said.
According to data from Stats SA, deaths from major non-communicable diseases increased by 58.7% over 20 years, from 103 428 in 1997 to 164 205 in 2018. The median age at death was 65 for males and 69 for females.
Medical scheme membership has remained flat for many years, largely due to SA’s high unemployment rate. Just more than 9m people were medical scheme beneficiaries at the end of 2022, the latest year for which data are available.
BusinessLIVE article – Surge in chronic illness fuels medical inflation (Restricted access)
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