Members of Parliament’s medical aid have most to lose if they adopt NHI Bill

Members of Parliament’s medical aid, Parmed, will have the most to lose if they adopt the NHI Bill this week, as Parmed is the most comprehensive and expensive medical scheme, with benefits richer than the top options on open medical schemes such as Momentum, Discovery and Fedhealth.

The medical fraternity and business organisations have called on the NCOP to not pass the NHI Bill tomorrow after the NCOP’s health and social services committee voted to accept it without enough consultation and review.

Parmed is the restricted medical scheme for members of parliament and according to a Benefit Comparison of Parmed with Discovery, GEMS Fedhealth, Bonitas and Momentum, published on the website of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group, Parmed’s benefit from some key advantages, such as::

• Very comprehensive benefits
• Competitive contributions 
• No restrictions in terms of hospital, pharmacy or specialist networks 
• Very comprehensive and flexible medicine formularies 
• Cover for all chronic conditions 
• No co-payments or deductibles on procedures.

These benefits all contribute to a scheme that offers its members freedom of choice and some of the richest benefits available in the medical schemes market.

According to the latest scheme data published by the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS), Parmed costs were more than R5 500 per person per month in 2021, which is 2.65 times the average medical scheme cost in 2021.

ALSO READ: NCOP committee passed NHI Bill ‘without enough consultation and review’

Do MPs forget they will also fall under NHI Bill?

MPs do complain that they have run out of benefits on Parmed which is probably due to reaching the limit on some day-to-day limits, which are much higher than other schemes and well beyond what NHI will be able to offer with under R700 per person per month even on the most optimistic funding scenario.

It is therefore not clear why MPs think that they will be better off under NHI, unless they do not understand what the proposed NHI entails. At a meeting of the Western Cape parliament’s standing committee on health and wellness on 24 November, ANC member Rachel Windvogel said she had no comments on the NHI Bill, but rather on the process.

“When there is a process and deadlines, we do not continue outside of those processes and thus cannot just decide on dates when we did not receive a response to a request for extension.  The DA wants to be precise on guidelines but now wants to act outside them. It is really a shame if we are not going to support the Bill, it is really a shame if we do not support the Bill,” she said. 

“As a member sitting here I am a member of ParMed but I don’t have medical aid – its exhausted. I must pay for my own medicine. But it is nearly R7 000 a month that they deduct from my money. So now they are saying that I must go back to the public sector if I want assistance. If people are in hospital and their funds have runout they send them to the public hospital.”

Windvogel added that the NHI Bill will help the most vulnerable people as it is only an instrument that is going to fund services.

“I support the Bill. The Bill will work. We must stop protecting the middle class and business. If private hospitals were registered with the fund at least ordinary people would have access to it. Let us not be selfish. We must really, really support this Bill.” 

Parmed’s benefits for medicine were R10 070 per person for acute benefits and R42 230 per person for chronic benefits back in 2017. The NHI is not likely to be able to sustain this level of cover without limiting access.

The scheme also has unlimited benefits for hospital cover and covers specialists at up to 300% of the scheme rate which means that it is impossible to run out of hospital benefits.