Better never than late?

An interesting email crossed my desk on Wednesday (11 October 2006), and it came from the Council for Medical Schemes, relating to a list that the DoH should have released some time ago.

Some background technically speaking the National Health reference Price List (NHRPL) should be released fairly early in the year, allowing the medical schemes industry to determine what their benefits will look like, for the following year, and what kind of contribution increases clients can expect. The list uses the CPIX number to act as an inflation indicator. The registrar of Medical Schemes, Patrick Masobe, issued a statement saying that the Council for Medical Schemes had been informed that the National Department of Health (DoH) will not publish the NHRPL until the enabling regulations have been finalised. According to Masobe the latest available publication of the NHRPL to which medical schemes may wish to refer in definition of benefits is therefore the 2006 version. Our view is that medical schemes, in the absence of an alternative, may consider having reference to the 2006 NHRPL in the definition of their benefits for 2007 (with appropriate modifications where deemed necessary), or alternatively apply appropriate inflators to their 2006 benefits. According Masobe the Council has been advised by Statistics South Africa that the CPIX is 4.9%. Editors thoughts: * For the DoH to not release the NHRPL this late in the year is interesting, in the extreme. Schemes have traditionally made certain assumptions when doing their numbers, as they awaited the NHRPL release. * The other interesting point is that the DoH, and possibly the CMS, dont believe that there is such a thing as medical inflation, either. Although a call to Stats SA will tell you otherwise. The other side of the coin is that if this were taken into account (medical inflation) then premiums/contributions would be a lot higher. * It also appears that the 2006 NHRPL cant be used either, according to e-Chronicle, an industry publication, as there are some legislative issues raised by the SA Medical Association.