Supplementing Medical Aid Cover by Using Gap Insurance
December 14, 2021
Supplementing your current medical aid membership is a good – and affordable – way to increase your medical cover without resorting to a higher level of membership of your medical scheme. The addition of a gap policy to your insurance portfolio ensures that you never have to face extra health costs in the form of co-payments.
Supplementing medical aid cover with gap insurance is the perfect complement
There is a good reason why gap cover is so popular. South Africans are learning that you don’t have to pay higher monthly medical aid premiums to get added benefits. Instead, they invest in gap insurance to enhance their medical aid cover.
Note that while gap cover is an adjunct to medical aid (only medical scheme members qualify for short
fall insurance) the schemes themselves do not provide gap cover. For that you go to a specialised short-term insurance company.
The purpose of top-up insurance is to augment your medical aid so that you never have to face co-payments. You may not be aware of this but medical aids pay only a portion of medical costs, especially where hospital stays, specialist treatment and expensive consultations are concerned.
Although the medical aid paperwork may include an addendum where they say they pay 400% of the medical fees, which sounds great, they pay only 400% of the fees according to their internal tariff list. This usually falls far short of the total price on the medical bill – especially for cancer treatments and the like. Medical scheme members know only too well that they can lose out badly when their medical savings account runs out or the medical aid refuses to reach certain payment levels.
The obvious solution is to increase your cover so you never have to make co-payments. Gap cover insurance is the answer. Here are Zestlife’s current premiums:
We extend a friendly invitation for you to fill out the form on this page and then submit it to us. We will contact you with a quote, based on your medical aid membership
All info was correct at time of publishing