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[File photo] Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo
The chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dlomo, says there seems to be a section of the Medical Schemes Act that allows medical aid companies to discriminate against black doctors.
Dr Dlomo’s comments follow the release of the Section 59 report last week.
The panel, which was led by advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, investigated medical schemes’ deliberate and systematic discrimination against black healthcare providers.
It found the medical aid companies, such as Discovery, Medscheme, and GEMS, cast more aspersions on black practitioners to have committed fraud, wastage, or abuse than their white counterparts.
The three medical aid schemes represent 80% of the membership of medical aids.
Dlomo says the Council for Medical Aid Schemes has assured them that they are going to look into this matter within 30 days.
“Is there something in the Act that gives them this discriminatory behaviour that they did? We’re really interested in this part because we can’t be in a situation where, in a democracy, there is discrimination against a particular racial group. If that exists in their Act, it has to be reviewed, but we doubt if it is. But then we’re assured because within thirty days they promised to have completed this investigation by themselves as the Council for Medical Schemes and to report back to the minister and to ourselves with regard to their findings on this issue.”
