MEDICAL schemes are managing their members’ claims for medicines much more tightly to try and rein in costs, according to the latest Mediscor review."The medical schemes are playing a delicate balancing act, saving where they can so they can afford the newer, more expensive medicines coming onto the market," said Mediscor’s manager of benefit management Madelein Bester.Mediscor is a medical benefit management company that helps medical schemes control their drug budgets, and publishes an assessment of medicine expenditure trends every year.Ms Bester said the review’s findings were broadly representative of the industry, which covers more than 8-million lives, but said it did not include South Africa’s two biggest medical schemes Discovery Health and the Government Employees Medical Scheme, which have a slightly younger and healthier profile.Mediscor’s review for last year, which analysed the medicine claims of 1-million members of 22 medical schemes, found overall medicine expenditu...
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