Gap Cover and NHI Insurance (proposed National Health Insurance for South Africa)

December 11, 2021

In order to understand the future of gap cover for medical aid in South Africa you need to know what NHI insurance is.

What is NHI Insurance?

The ANC has a pie-in-the-sky idea of giving medical aid to everyone for free. Of course, the taxpayers will foot the bill for what would amount to a massive Government Medical Aid. Government workers would decide who gets what treatment, when and how.

Imagine people with the capabilities of those at SAA, Home Affairs and Eskom running your medical aid! Imagine someone with a massive salary deciding how, when and if you are allowed to visit a specialist.

This writer believes that that NHI in South Africa will never come about and if it does, it will fail so royally that we will be back to private health care in a year or two.

How long will it take?

Even if the NHI is imposed on South Africa it will take 10 to 15 years from now (writing in 2019). It will take at least that long to “phase out” the current medical aids. Can you really see Discovery and the rest letting that happen? We can’t……..

But as long as medical aids continue to exist in their current form, then gap cover for medical schemes will exist too. That is because supplementary short-term insurance to cover your co-payment “gap” will be around for a long time. For as long as 15 to 20 years from now, at the very least.

So the horizon for the usefulness of medical aid (and therefore gap cover) is far off. In fact, we believe it will never happen. Where will all the great hospitals and well-qualified doctors and specialists come from? And who will subject them to a state-run health system where the government can’t even run a post office.

Hang on to your medical aid and get supplementary gap cover.
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All info was correct at time of publishing