Private healthcare costs are rising, making essential healthcare services even more unaffordable for many South Africans.
The rises are due to the lack of a formal, structured framework to determine private healthcare tariffs, according to Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) minister Mpho Parks Tau.
‘The cost of private healthcare should remain in check to ensure the majority of South Africans have access to affordable healthcare,’ said Tau, who was detailing the DTIC’s newly published Interim Block Exemption for Tariffs Determination in the Healthcare Sector at a joint press conference with the Department of Health (DOH) on Monday.
The two departments hope to make private healthcare more affordable and thus accessible to a greater number of people. The block exemption enables certain healthcare providers and funders to collectively determine maximum tariffs for healthcare services, diagnosis and treatment codes, and quality metrics across prescribed minimum benefits (PMBs) and non-PMBs for three years. ….more
