Regular medical aid members depend on their medical scheme is for those times when the unexpected happens in terms of your health.
A good plan on a registered medical aid in South Africa is supposed to take care of all those medical treatments you so badly need. However, even after paying thousands of Rands for private health care, you’re still going to have heavy medical bills to contend with.
Too many areas fall outside the scope of regular medical aid
Medical scheme members should have peace of mind when they land in hospital, but they don’t. There are just way too many treatments they won’t cover. There are even specialist fields that fall outside the scope of cover by medical aids.
Gap cover comes to the rescue, and South Africa has many gap cover providers. One of these is Stratum.
They’ve been providing their gap cover for more than 10 years already. They help customers to actually sidestep the bills their medical aid won’t cover.
About Stratum
- Stratum’s gap cover isn’t a medical aid. It’s a short term insurance product. It’s simply an enhancement to medical aid and tackles many of the bills medical aid won’t pay.
- They offer different gap cover plans to suit your age and budget.
- Individuals as well as corporate groups can get gap cover.
- Their Premium gap cover option offers the most benefits.
- They offer gap cover options for the ‘over-65s’.
- It provides an additional 500% cover above the medical tariff rate.
- All the co-payments you have to pay are refunded.
- Check out Stratum’s different waiting periods.
- You can avoid social distancing hassles and simply apply online.
- You get sub-limit cover where your medical aid only pays a portion.
- Private ward cover. This is useful as it covers hospital fees your medical aid doesn’t cover. It also ensures a bed in a private ward as well as a lodger fee for your spouse.
- It offers cancer cover, out-patient specialist consultation cover, physical rehabilitation top-up cover and much more.
Paying such a large premium every month for medical aid, you’d expect that members shouldn’t ever have to hear about exclusions, inclusions and co-payments.
Stratum understands this. They know that in South Africa in 2020, just your day of confinement alone for a caesarean can cost you in the region of R17 000. Subsequent days can be close to R3000 each.
Specialists can charge what they like. If your medical aid only pays up to a certain amount, there could be thousands of Rands outstanding that you must pay. Unless you have gap cover, medical aid can break you financially instead of being a help to you.
Take charge of medical bills with gap cover
- Many schemes implement age-related premiums so read the fine print carefully.
- Remember – if something is excluded from being covered by your medical scheme, it will be excluded by gap cover too. A typical example of this is cosmetic surgery.
- You have to belong to a registered medical scheme to benefit from gap cover from Stratum.
- File claims online – these must be submitted within a certain time frame.
- Documentation may be required to substantiate a claim.
- There are always qualified claims specialists who can assist.
Do research on your medical scheme and gap cover to ensure you’re fully informed about what all is covered and what isn’t.
Medical aids t exasperate their members big time. Luckily gap cover from Stratum has stepped in to tackle your medical bills before they get out of hand.