If you belong to a medical aid in South Africa, there’s a fairly good chance you are with Discovery Health. It’s been around 25+ years since Discovery Health launched in South Africa, followed by their incredibly successful Vitality loyalty program. Discovery is, without doubt, the largest medical scheme in South Africa and with all that 2020 has brought from a medical perspective, they have had to look at how they can save their members some money as we head into 2021.
Discovery increased their monthly premiums by 9.5% for 2020 but this won’t be the case going into 2021! We have some good news (sadly, there hasn’t been much of that this year) for any of you who are Discovery Health members.
Discovery has delayed any premium increases for the first six months of 2021!
Essentially this means that members will pay 2020 premiums from January through to the end of June. Premiums in the second half of the year are expected to only increase by approximately 5.9% across all plans, which is a further saving compared to last year.
Let’s use an example to show you how this will turn into savings for you:
Let’s say that your medical aid contributions this year have been R3 000 per month for your family or R36 000 for the year.
- If there was going to be a 10% increase in your contributions for 2021 (as there was in 2020) this would mean that your contributions would increase to R3 300/month or R39 600 for the year.
- However, Discovery is only charging you an expected 6% increase from July 2021. You’ll continue to pay R3 000 from Jan – July and around R3 180/month for the last 6 months of 2021. This means that if you stay on the same plan next year, your annual premium will total R37 080.
- That’s a saving of R2 520 for the year, which doesn’t sound like much but it’s significant in this difficult financial climate.
Discovery has reiterated that they are in a strong position even after this disastrous Coronavirus year. Ultimately there were fewer claims this year as South Africans were mainly been stuck indoors, looking after themselves and their health. This meant there were fewer doctor and hospital visits and therefore fewer claims.
To conclude, this is excellent news for any of you who belong to Discovery. Any money we can save in 2021 is going to be so helpful as we look to recover from one of the worst years in recent history.
The InsuranceFundi Team