What you need to know about medical aid as an employer
Living costs in South Africa are on the rise. With that, annual medical aid contributions continue to increase as part of this trend and many South Africans are struggling to keep up. How do you, as an employer, respond to this? What are your obligations and responsibilities to your employees in this regard?
Here is a deeper look into medical aid from an employer’s perspective.
General Trends
With the cost of medical aid being what it is, many employees may opt to not be covered by a medical aid scheme. It’s a matter of affordability, but the benefits of medical cover outweigh the costs in the end, and employees should be encouraged to join for their own advantage.
Company Employee Only Schemes
A company medical aid scheme is restricted in the sense that eligibility for membership is only open to employees. The advantages are that every employee receives a benefit from the cover. The disadvantage is that most South African companies can’t afford it.
What tends to happen is that many companies within an industry will band together to offer their employees an industry-specific medical aid scheme. Motohealth for workers in the motor industry is a good example of this kind of insurance.
Medical Aid Subsidies
As an employer, you can also have your business cover a portion of your employees’ monthly contributions to a medical aid scheme. You have the right to restrict this to a specific scheme, forcing your employees to join a particular scheme. This can be useful in helping to negotiate monthly premiums and percentage contributions.
As an employer, it’s entirely your prerogative as to how much to pay towards contributions, although this will most likely be determined by the state of your business, rather than generosity. The most popular rate across companies is 50%, but it can be as low as 30% or as high as 66%. Whatever the subsidy rate is, your employees will still be responsible to settle the full amount of the monthly premium.
Permanent health insurance paid for by the employer is also not an obligation and is certainly not South African business standard.
Cost To Company (CTC)
By far the most popular medical aid solution for businesses is a CTC agreement. As an employer, you will offer your employees a portion of their medical aid contributions. This amount will be agreed upon in the employment contract and, should it be agreed upon, your employee cannot expect any excess amount.
It’s also important to note that, should you do this, then as an employer, you have the right to force your employees to be part of a specific scheme.
The content in this article was provided by Essential Med.
About Essential Med:
Essential Med has been providing innovative health insurance products since 2005. We are now part of the AfroCentric group of companies and are growing from strength to strength in our uncompromising journey of providing tailored medical insurance to all South Africans.
Essential Med is a health insurer, not a medical aid. Our product is simple, affordable and flexible. We include a comprehensive range of day-to-day, hospital and life insurance options as unique as you are. For employers and groups we tailor specific options to suit your industry and company.
For more information, contact:
Website: https://www.essentialmed.co.za/
Tel: 0861 70 70 70
Email: info@essentialmed.co.za