FINANCIAL FORUM
Should my retired mother be on her own medical scheme or be a beneficiary on mine?
The question becoming increasingly common but it might be cost effective to keep your elderly parents on their own medical aid, which you can downgrade and upgrade as the need arises
Q: My 65-year-old mother is on a medical scheme, but it has become too costly for her to maintain. We’re considering adding her onto our medical scheme as an adult dependent. Is this more cost effective than being on her own, what are the requirements to add her, and are there any differences between schemes we should be aware of? If it’s not viable for us to add her as an adult dependent, what’s the best, most affordable basic medical scheme cover for someone her age? — Meryll, via e-mail A: Jill Larkan, head: healthcare consulting at GTC, responds: As our parents transition into retirement, we find that they are required to live on a very tight budget, often with small CPI-related increases (for the lucky ones). We also see that medical scheme increases are often about 2% higher than CPI, resulting in ever-increasing pressure on disposable income. Given this predicament questions such as yours are raised more and more often in the hope that healthcare brokers can offer some respi...
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