The first salvo in a battle between medical schemes and hospital groups has been fired. Private hospitals may be faced with a demand to pay back R1-billion, allegedly charged to medical schemes over the past three years for overpriced theatre gases. Medical schemes say that they are potentially accountable if they fail to retrieve any funds that were paid to hospital in error. The crux of the matter is the 2004 legislation that forced hospitals to bill patients at a single exit price for consumables. As a result, hospitals were supposed to charge patients at cost price for theatre gases per millilitre used and not per minute - as they have done. The technical difference in charging is apparently worth about R300-million in 2007, according to the Board of Healthcare Funders. According to Rajesh Patel, BHF, overcharging and non-compliance with pricing mechanisms by hospitals means that medical schemes are paying an additional R1-million a day. And that money is paid by you - the member of the medical scheme. The bottom line is that private medical costs are skyrocketing - and set to rise again as hospital groups want to increase their 2008 rates by between 9% and 10% across the board, with additional tarrif increases of between 8% and 33%. Private medical costs have risen an incredible 60% in real terms between 2000 and 2006. How can this be justified? Government interference in private medicine is generally bitterly resented and certainly goes against free market principles. But people's health should not really be regarded as a free market commodity and perhaps this action, and the fact that private hospital groups are about to meet with the Minister of Health to discuss rising costs, is the first in a series of steps that will contain health costs. Let's hope so.
Bridget Farham, https://www.bizcommunity.com