Gap cover guide for medical aid members

December 5, 2024

Here’s a quick guide to gap cover in South Africa. In most other countries you can get gap cover – but only for your vehicles. But here in South Africa our public health system is a wreck, so most salary earners have medical aid membership. And with that they get gap cover.

The reason you need gap insurance is that the medical aids are under strain due to the direct costs of specialists and hospitals. The medical schemes simply cannot afford to pay the bills in full. That is why your medical savings plan usually runs out, and why you get co-payment notifications.

What is a co-payment?

Also called a shortfall, a co-payment means you have to pay a big part of your hospital and specialist costs out of your own pocket.

 

Guide to gap cover

Let’s show you how gap insurance for medical aid works:

  1. You need to be a member of a medical aid scheme in South Africa in order to qualify for gap cover
  2. You can check the status of your medical aid by visiting the Council for Medical Schemes website
  3. Every beneficiary on your medical aid get’s cover from a gap insurance policy
  4. Medical aids themselves do not offer gap cover.
  5. Specialised short-term insurance companies
  6. Among the leading such companies are Zestlife, Turnberry and Stratum.
  7. So now that you know you qualify for medical gap cover, use the form on this page to sign up
  8. Add your contact details to the form and answer the questions. Then click Get Quote to submit
  9. A gap cover expert will contact you to guide your futher in the process and help you to sign up
  10. Fortunately, gap cover is inexpensive. The monthly premiums are between 5% and 10% of your medical aid premiums.

So it’s alot cheaper to add gap cover to your medical aid plan than to upgrade your medical scheme!

Act now and save!

 

All info was correct at time of publishing