Help me understand medical aid

[FapCop]

If there's someone clued up about the ins and outs of medical aid, I need help understanding something.

If you sign up with Discovery and after a month or two realize its a crap deal and no longer want medical aid, why would you have to wait a whole year before you get to cancel?

 

[OHNO]

Arksun,

You can cancel at any time. You can however only change plans at the start of each season.

I think you confuse that with that you can not cancel. Not true.

 

[Park@82]

Crap deal?

 

[StellenboschStudent]

Arksun,

You can cancel at any time. You can however only change plans at the start of each season.

I think you confuse that with that you can not cancel. Not true.

Jip, you can cancel at anytime, but upgrade/downgrade at the beginning of the year.
If you had a saving accounts there might be some fees to pay if you used more of the savings in x amount of time.

 

[pjp]

There are some options open to you during the year. Whilst it is correct that you have unrestricted plan change opportunities at year-end, you can still change some plans during the year. You need to talk to a professional broker to investigate for you.

 

[Foxhound5366]

There are some options open to you during the year. Whilst it is correct that you have unrestricted plan change opportunities at year-end, you can still change some plans during the year. You need to talk to a professional broker to investigate for you.

Yeah you can, I've switched from Discovery Classic Saver to Discovery Classic Delta Saver mid-year ... ended up saving myself a few hundred at a time when I really needed that. The thing is I could make that switch because it didn't affect my actual risk level to Discovery: the 'Delta' restriction was just a limitation imposed by myself on the number of hospitals I could use, and the penalty fee I'd pay if I went anywhere else. All the actual medical coverage remained the same, which is why Discovery didn't mind me making that switch.

The reason they only allow you to do it once a year is because I think they plan the risk pools and premium levels annually ... it's also so that you can't conveniently increase your medical aid eight months into your pregnancy (for example) just so you qualify for increased benefits over only this period, and then drop down immediately afterwards.

With health insurance you seriously need to take the long-term view: do I want to pay a premium for the rest of my adult life to a company in the bet that when I fall sick I'm going to need a lot more money in one bulk payment (e.g. cancer diagnosis or serious vehicle accident - both quite likely scenarios in South Africa) from them than I'm likely to ever pay them in these reasonable installments. It is NOT something you do on a month-to-month basis, because **** can strike at any time.