Medical aid increase ‘extortion’

Mandy van Deventer, Fish Hoek

I have a hospital plan with a well known medical aid company.

I was informed of my annual premium increase in November last year.

It is a high increase, which I can't really afford. I phoned them and (long story short) they said that if I change my chronic medication option to "Associated" instead of "Any" then I can save R300 a month.

So I did that. Therefore I had to get my chronic medication through the medical aid’s appointed pharmacy instead of the one I normally use. That's fine.

But what my medical aid did not tell me is that they then increased the co-payment on my one chronic medication from R166 to over R600.

The pharmacy discovered this about a month later when they processed a request for the tablets. So they phoned the medical aid company to query this huge (unethical) increase and was told that this is because I changed to the cheaper option.

How is this even legal? Firstly, the medical aid should have told me that there would be this huge increase on the co-payment if I change to the cheaper option. Secondly, how can an increase of over R500 even be allowed? Usually the annual increase on this tablet’s co-payment is only a few rand.

So far from saving money, I am having to pay much more.

I have therefore changed back to the previous option I was on, but now they have me caught between a rock and a hard place.

If I change to the cheaper premium option then my co-payment is more than the premium increase. So they are forcing me into accepting the big premium increase of R300. Talk about extortion.

So I am writing this letter to warn people. If you contact your medical aid company because you want to change to a "cheaper" option because you can't afford the premium anymore, please ensure you ask them if there will be any changes to your co-payments. Hopefully you will not be caught out like I was.