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PARLIAMENT: ACTIONSA TACKLES POLITICIANS' ‘EXCLUSIVE’ MEDICAL SCHEME
- 01 September 2025
- Parliament
- SA Legal Academy
ActionSA MP Tebogo Letlape has announced his intention to table a Parliamentary & Provincial Medical Aid Scheme Amendment Bill – calling for input by 1 October 2025. According to a pre-tabling explanatory summary of what is envisaged, the Bill will seek to ‘substitute compulsory membership of the Parmed Medical Aid Scheme … with voluntary membership’. This is noting:
- ‘escalating costs’
- associated ‘substantial deductions from the salaries of Parmed members to cover medical aid contributions’, and
- a ‘one-size-fits-all approach (that) fails to accommodate the diverse needs of its members, who have varying family sizes and healthcare requirements’.
Published on the ActionSA website, according to an accompanying media statement the draft Bill is underpinned by concerns about compulsory membership of an ‘exclusive medical aid scheme’ separating MPs and the members of provincial legislatures from the ‘everyday realities’ faced by most South Africans dependent on ‘collapsing and underfunded public hospitals and clinics’.
Against that backdrop, should the tabled Bill pass the required desirability test when considered by the National Assembly committee concerned, it is expected to encourage MPs and the members of provincial legislatures to ‘lead by example in the journey toward universal health coverage by choosing their own medical cover rather than being forced into a system of entrenched privilege’.
In the party’s view, ‘when politicians are made to stand in the same queues, wait for the same doctors, and experience the same conditions as (ordinary) citizens, they … (may) finally have the political will to fix the system’.
- explanatory summary
- draft Bill
- ActionSA media statement
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch
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