Changing medical aids - from one medical aid scheme to another - is a risk-filled exercise not to be undertaken lightly.
The urge to change your medical aid scheme is understandable. Another scheme may be offering better benefits, lower rates, or more added extras such as cheap movie tickets.
Or you may be angry at your medical aid and wanting to change medical aids because your current provider has not lived up to your expectations.
Look before you leapBut look before you leap. Changing medical aid schemes can be a risky and costly undertaking.
Sometimes the law is an ass. A case in point is that it is illegal to belong to more than one medical aid at a time. "Who would want to?" you may ask. You might!
So the law says that when you are changing medical aids you must resign from the one scheme, before you join another.
Window period when changing medical aidsBUT, when you join a medical aid there is often a three month window period, at least for certain conditions, pregnancy, for example. So for example, if a member of the family falls pregnant during the window period, pre- and post-natal expenses, including hospital expenses, may not be covered.
In changing medical aids you also need to take pre-existing conditions into account - conditions that are not covered (or covered with window period restrictions) because you or a member of your family had the condition before joining the new scheme.
'What if' questions The point of this article is to warn that changing medical aids is NOT as easy as A, B, C, and to warn you to look into all the implications before you do. One tip, ask yourself, your advisor and your prospective medical aid a lot of "what if" questions and make sure the answers do not spell T R O U B L E !
One other thing, if you are going to get involved in changing medical aid schemes do it sooner and younger, rather than older and later. The older you are, the bless likely the new scheme will
want you. |
