Medical aid racism destroyed me, says pharmacist

The “racist” conduct of South Africa’s medical schemes has left a string of broken lives and dreams, with a Pretoria pharmacist telling how he went from owning four successful pharmacies and a medical centre to being forced to work for a retail pharmacy chain.

“I was a landlord of a thriving medical centre that have since lost. I had two pharmacies in the city centre and two in the township. I used to employ 46 people but today I am employed myself, thanks to racist, malicious medical aid schemes” Moloko Mokoditoa, told The Citizen.

A lifelong dream crushed

Growing up in the Atteridgeville township, West of Pretoria, he used to travel to travel about 15 km to town, in order to buy medication for his asthmatic mother, and vowed that som eday he would become a pharmacist and open a pharmacy in the township.

After graduating in 1999, Mokoditoa opened his first pharmacy just a few blocks from his house, and by 2011, he had opened his fourth pharmacy and the medical centre. Little did he know everything was about to come crumbling down.

He said his nightmare started when medical aid schemes investigators started to target his busiest pharmacy in town, Tshwane Pharmacy, for alleged fraudulent claims. This lead to all his other pharmacies subsequently being blacklisted.

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“I was put on indirect payment, meaning I would render the service, give out medication and the medical aid schemes would pay their members directly, who would then pay me. Now I had to run around chasing their members to pay me when I have staff, rent and suppliers to pay,” the 45 year-old said.

This was the beginning of the end for his business and sanity, with his costly attempts to fight the medical scheme bullies coming to nothing.

“The following year I lost it, slipped into a mental breakdown. I had a gun and one night I almost wiped out my family. It was a scene at my house and that is when I was admitted to a psychiatric facility for six weeks,” Mokoditoa said.

Read More: ‘Racist’ medical aid inquiry findings are damning

He believes the medical aid schemes targeted successful black businesses to cripple them, claiming their racist agenda was manifested by their using of former apartheid police as investigators.

Mokoditoa, who testified and submitted an affidavit to the Section 59 Investigation Panel in 2019, said one of the medical schemes went as far as kicking him off his wife’s cover because his pharmacies were involved in suspected medical aid fraud.

“It was only after they were ordered by the court that they reinstated my cover. That is how cruel and malicious these medical schemes can be,” he said.

The investigation, led by advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, was appointed during in 2019 to investigate allegations of the targeting of black practitioners for perception of fraudulent claims to withhold their payments.

The panel’s investigation found that the medical scheme’s conduct had disproportionate impact on black providers, which amounts to unfair racial discrimination.

The interim report, which was finally released this week following attempts to muzzle it, states that Discovery was 35% more likely to identify black providers as having committed fraud, waste and abuse, Gems was 80% more likely to identify black providers as guilty of the same, while Medscheme was 330% more likely to identify black providers as guilty of fraud, waste and abuse.

siphom@citizen.co.za