I think my response to that statement would simply be “Are you 100% sure your medical scheme is going to provide you with sufficient cover if you get really really ill?” And if you can confidently say “I’m 100% sure they will!” then don’t read the rest of this article!
But you probably are going to read the rest of this post because you know that the treatment cost of dreaded diseases are really expensive and your medical scheme has definitely put rand caps in place on the amounts they are prepared to cough up! Let’s take the big “C” as an example. Any medical scheme you belong to has an oncology benefit limit (if you are expecting them to pay for the oncology treatment in full).
What Is Your Annual Oncology Benefit Limit? My Guess Is That You Dont Know!
R400 000 per year? R200 000 per year? R100 000 per year? R0
What if I told you that statistically 1 in 7 men and 1 in 8 woman in South Africa will suffer from cancer during their lives! Or let’s make that 14% of men and 12.5% of woman! It’s shocking!
Perhaps now is a good time to phone up your medical aid scheme and check on those oncology benefits.
These are the questions you need to ask your medical scheme:
- Will my medical aid plan offer me more than simple PMB oncology cover? (that’s the base line cover everyone enjoys)
- What is the overall annual rand amount of oncology coverage I will enjoy?
- Does my medical aid pay that benefit in full or is there a co-payment?
- Will my medical scheme cover the cost of more advanced and expensive oncology treatments?
Then these are the questions you need to ask yourself:
- What are the financial implications of being diagnosed with a critical illness like cancer?
- If my medical aid is going to only pay X could that put me seriously out of pocket?
- How big is that out of pocket figure?
- What are my employer’s policies on getting seriously ill?
- Do I need additional critical illness cover?
I’m going to answer the last question for you! You do need a certain level of critical illness cover because for most of us, belonging to a medical aid scheme is really expensive. That forces us to choose mid-range medical aid plan types that suite our budget. Unfortunately mid-range plans come with mid-range benefits. Sure, get ill and land up in hospital for a few days and your medical aid plan will probably do Ok for you..
But what if you land up in hospital for an extended period of time and rack up hundreds and thousands of rands in cancer treatment costs? Do you think your mid-range medical aid plan is going to do enough for you then?
It isn’t. My isn’t. Nobody’s medical aid plan will. The only alternative is to top up with some comprehensive critical illness cover. Get diagnosed with a critical illness like cancer, expect a policy pay-out and that’s at least going to ease the financial burden.
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Until next time.
The InsuranceFundi Team