Medical aids keep recording surpluses, which could be good news for members

Medical schemes continue to accumulate record-high surpluses even as their members are starting to schedule delayed elective surgeries and deal with more severe medical complications after the lockdowns.

South Africa's largest open medical scheme, Discovery Health Medical Scheme (DHMS), ended with a R2 billion surplus in 2021. It sat with R30.4 billion reserves at the end of that year that will help it pay members' claims as pent-up demand rises, thanks to the R9 billion surplus in 2020 when people were not visiting doctors and hospitals.

Accumulating medical aid buffers