GetMed Did Not Last as a Registered Medical Aid

November 26, 2024

Anyone can land up in a hospital, even young, healthy people. That’s why Getmed was created. Unfortunately, the experience did go well for the medical scheme. It ended in de-registration.

The Story of Getmed

An accredited medical scheme has the necessary infrastructure to run the scheme competently, but what about GetMed? So deregistration was the result, which isn’t a good thing at all for the members. That’s because the Council for Medical Schemes couldn’t guarantee that the plan offered the members the same benefits as a registered scheme could. That would be the cover that members who belong to a registered medical scheme would receive.

Getmed received registration in 2010, and they had about 2 500 members. However, the CMS cancelled this registration. In 2009 the Office of the Registrar for Medical Schemes heard about the GetMed Health Protection Plan, an unregistered product.

The Getmed Story

Some members sent in complaints. The plan commenced with a range of benefit options for the sick fund of the Bargaining Council. The company expanded the Health Protection Plan product outside the bargaining council, marketing the product around the country as a medical scheme. This included corporates who wanted the product for their employees.

According to the Medical Schemes Act 131 of 1998, the Registrar for Medical Schemes determined that the product fell within the definition of ‘doing the business of a medical scheme’. The CMS found out that more than 2500 members enrolled with the GetMed Plan.

The directors of GetMed agreed that their product did fall within the confines of the Medical Schemes Act. They wanted to register the plan as a medical scheme. Conditional registration followed in December 2010. It’s aim – to offer protection to those members who had already signed up for the plan.

Conditions Not Adhered To

Certain conditions were imposed – to pay the application fees for the accreditation, to provide a financial guarantee as required by the Medical Schemes Act, to provide more documentation regarding evaluations done under their administration and to also provide a reinsurance contract for evaluation by the Office of the Registrar.

GetMed failed to comply with the conditions, even after various efforts to get them to comply with the conditions of registration.

The Registrar then wrote to GetMed in August 2011 cancelling the registration as a medical scheme, ordering the scheme to cease from operating as a medical scheme. The scheme was requested to confirm its adherence to this order but failed to respond.

If you belong to a registered medical scheme in South Africa, you can apply for Gap Cover. Just complete and submit the form on this page

All info was correct at time of publishing