Medical aid's silent partner

SHORTFALLS: 'GAP COVER ISN'T A LUXURY' >>> How co-payments are quietly undermining your financial future.

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Consumers plan for retirement, save for their children’s education, join a medical aid and try to build a financial cushion, but they often forget about the medical co-payments that chip away at those plans, year after year.

It starts small with a R5 000 co-payment for a scope examination. Then a few months later, you have to fork out a R12 000 shortfall for a hospital admission. Fast forward five years and you spent tens of thousands of rands on out-of-pocket medical costs that your medical aid did not fully cover.

That is why Tony Singleton, CEO at Turnberry Management Risk Solutions, warns that medical aids cannot keep pace with the rate of medical inflation while still maintaining affordable premiums, making co-payments grow each year, while more sub-limits are introduced and specialist fees continue to outpace medical aid rates.

"This means more and more South Africans are finding themselves forced to withdraw money from their retirement funds or take on debt to cover medical aid shortfalls," says Singleton.