My Recent Health Journey

When I was approaching my 60th birthday, I thought it would be a good idea to get myself on a medical aid scheme. I have always been a very healthy person, hardly ever getting sick except for the odd flu. I like following natural cures and preventative medicine.

In looking around at people around this age, I noticed that there seemed to be more potential for them to need more care than just home help to recover from mishaps and injuries.

There was one especially significant case where no medical aid, a horrible car accident, and having to go to the local government hospital were just the pits. Think very third-world, inefficient, and slack.

No, thank you.

So I listened to that inner nudge, took the gulp and shopped around this confusing system and found something which seemed to suit me and my pocket.

But after 3 months, I soon ran into trouble and couldn’t pay for it.

(This was a classic case of just jumping in to a scheme without thinking through what it could do for me, what I really wanted help with – therefore I sabotaged it.)

I think I plugged into the mindset which a lot of people utter – having to pay for medical aid seems to carry quite a lot of resentment, swearing at the medical aid societies, denigrating them for being very expensive and greedy, not really helping etc etc.

I asked my broker what to do, and he suggested we just start again and what actually was I looking for medical aid to pay for?  I said, apart from hospital cover, I wanted doctors visits, dentist and optometrists.

So he suggested another plan, much cheaper than I was originally paying for and including these other covers, and I felt much better about it.

After all, if I was never sick, what on earth would I only be needing hospital cover for? This thought rests on not really understanding how the medical system works.

So I went again and did all the necessary questions and tests.

A lot of admin. And I was in.

But I was much happier as I could now have help paying for my visits to the optometrist and dentist. Oh, and a normal doctor
Yes, because I was at the bottom of the rung scheme, I had to go to the scheme’s designated dentists and doctors.  But I did find the right-for-me professionals.

Again, it took a bit of admin, but that’s the price you pay for not paying top dollar hahaha.
I’ve come to appreciate that the ADMIN of understanding the particular system you’re on makes for better decisions. And that is also admin!

Why am I mentioning all this?

Because I recently had surprise cause to need to use doctors, hospital and all the testing which goes along with
diagnosing.

And again I had to learn the system.

SO glad I had this hospital help. More about this story later.