Medical aid is a must unfortunately. If you stop and you want to get back on, they charge you an x% extra per month on top of the standard rates. Also, if you must go to hospital, that easily makes up the cost. I had to go to hospital for a sinus operation about 2 years ago. Operation lasted about 2 hours and I slept one night in hospital: total cost was R100k.
I did a cost vs feature comparison a number of years ago because I wanted to move away from Discovery after losing my Diamond Vitality status. I took the features, cover, fine print and reviews of all the medical aids into account. Unfortunately, Discovery wins hands down so I only moved my life insurance policies away from them.
None of the other providers gives 200% hospital cover anymore and while some of them seem attractive like Medihelp and I think it was KeyHealth, if you check the reviews then you find that they fully approved hospital admissions and then just pay a fraction of the bill (like 25% or less sometimes). Other more reputable providers like BestMed and Bonitas do offer above 100% coverage (or at least, they did back then), but not 200% and I think there were some other issues as well. I think BestMed had very limited / shaky cancer cover and while we don’t have any cancer, when taking out an insurance policy, it is better to have something that’s got you covered for the worst case scenario.
So that brings you to the plans on Discovery which are:
Classic Priority: It is like Classic Saver, but with a self payment gap and above threshold benefits. However, they’ve got a lot of co-payments for in-hospital procedures that Classic Saver doesn’t have (i.e. There was a R4000 co-payment for my daughter’s grommets & tonsils, but none for the next child when we were on Classic Saver). They’ve also made some changes to exclude certain things like prescription medicine from “closing” your self-payment gap, making it very difficult to actually reach the above threshold benefits.
Classic Saver: This is the standard that I would usually recommend, but has become expensive. It is essentially a hospital plan with a savings bolt-on, but hospitals are also covered at 200%.
Classic Core: This is just a hospital plan (same as Classic Saver, but without the savings)
Classic Smart: This is actually what I’ve moved to now. It is also a hospital plan that covers 200% and it has unlimited doctor visits for doctors on the network (each with a co-payment of about R50-R70 per visit).
I’m basically on Classic Smart, because for our family, it still has 200% hospital coverage, it is much cheaper (R6k per month cheaper) and if I pay all the meds and doctors visits out of pocket up to the same amount covered by the savings from Classic Saver, there is an annual saving of about R20k. There are actually some decent doctors on the Smart network (in Centurion, Medipark is a large medical practice consisting of good and “meh” doctors, but they’re all on there). The most important thing to check is if your preferred hospital is on the Smart network. In our case, that is Midstream Mediclinic and they are.
P.S. There are other cheaper Discovery plans, the Essential versions of the above, but they only cover 100% in hospital. Since none of the specialists still charge 100% of the medical aid rates, I don’t really take the Essential plans into consideration.
So I’m looking to start collecting camping gear so we can start camping again.
Any recommendations for an air mattress where I don’t end up sleeping on the floor in the morning?
This write up is a huge help, thank you! I’m on Classic Saver, but I’ve also observed that it got expensive, so I was thinking about what other options are available. Your wall of text has given me a mouthful of food for thought.
We’re on Coastal Saver - slightly cheaper version of Classic Saver, but with planned hospitalisation only in our coastal network hospitals, which covers all the hospitals around us.
Also considering moving at the end of the year, so will look at the “Smart” range of plans. We have quite a lot of OOH costs every month (medication and the like), which eats up our savings pretty quickly each year, so a non-savings plan will work out cheaper for us in the longer term.
Make sure to change that when you move out of the area; my wife is on Coastal Saver from out PMB days, and had quite the co-payment surprise when she went for a small tooth thing.
If you’re moving to Witbank, let me know, I’ll show you around
The Classic Smart also has a little bit of day-to-day benefits. Per family, you get R800 over the counter medicine per year and R3000 prescribed medicine, but it must be prescribed by a network doctor. So what we did last year was to just pay R70 and visit a network doctor to renew my wife’s regular script so we could quickly deplete that.
We have our regular doctor that we go to and they’ve tried to get onto the Smart network, but Discovery says that there are too many doctors in the area already on the network. That’s because Medipark (which consists of about 30 doctors or so), are all on the network, even though they’re just one practice.
Yes, I’m not the best communicator and always have to use more words to get my point across. My wife always accuses me of “mansplaining”
We recently bought the Camp Master brand and was disappointed, we only used in the house and it got a puncture. Then we got another brand from Game and works like a dream. Used them a lot recently, not for camping though.
For camping specifically I would maybe recommend a foldable cot instead. It would at least give a little ground clearance or height for the crawlies.
With all my heart and kidney problems, med aid is a must but I have had to lower the packages until now we are on a basic hospital plan which has still literally saved my life and bank balance.
Getting a pacemaker on my own dime would have had me pay till I am dead. My heart conditions are covered under PMB so even the lowest hospital plan had to pay for most of it and my gap cover the rest.
And yes, gap cover is a must too.
I am also a prisoner of my current medical aid in that I cannot change to another medical aid with my pre-existing conditions.
I am with Fedhealth. Their PMB coverage has been good, had to fight for much of it though.
In the end, it did not go as badly as I thought it would (for me). It helped that the person who I was worried about not re-hiring came to the interview late and told me that their 5 year plan probably does not include staying with the company.
