Discovery Medical Aid Options - Which one for JHB?

Hi Jmaz,

Something thing you have to consider.... if your hubby's company pays a contribution towards the medical aid, they will pay towards the funds for the savings account as well.
Whereas if you take out the priority option, they wont contribute towards that portion and the 'savings' will all come out of your own pocket...

Hi Jmaz,

We initially were on classic priority, when I had my first. We are now on classic comprehensive and we have my second one coming and have decided we would rather go onto the highest next year because with our first she was a pretty sickly baby.

We saw the Paed at least once a month and currently see her at least every two months we have only just done a stretch of about 4 months. Our Paed is part of the network and charges discovery rates which is R650 a pop, that's excluding meds. Then there's the vaccines. If you go privately we were told by the sister who did our antenatal babies vaccines you looking at about R5000 I'm sure she said for the first bunch until 9 months not entirely sure. Last year we had to pay R10000 to get ourselves out of the self payment gap and into the above threshold. This year again we have reached our self payment gap currently it's lower its R5000.

Also our little one had to have grommets done at 6 months, we had to pay an upfront payment of R1650. These are expenses that if you didn't budget for them can be a bit of a problem.

However we also going higher for the simple reason that my hubby wants extensive dental surgery and that alone is extremely costly.

I have friends that were on the top of the range and dropped down to a lower plan and Murphy's law her children got sickly. Just research all the options yourself and compare as much as you can before making a decision.

Good luck


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Evening ladies!

My hubby and I are switching medical aids as he's starting a new job and they require us to be on theirs (Discovery). We're actually quite happy about this as we can choose an option that suits us better than we're currently on. Because it's through his company - there's no waiting periods and the pregnancy will be covered. (yay!) AND we'll have gap cover automatically from the company that I believe covers up to 500%.

SO, based on that - which option would you choose (or have you chosen - especially if you also have gap cover)?

We're debating between the Classic Saver, the Essential Saver or the Essential Core. There's also the Essential Priority but that's suuuper expensive and I'd say out of our budget.

The Essential Core is just a hospital plan and covers at 100% for specialists but the gap cover would cover any difference for procedures in-hospital.. so our financial advisor thinks that would be fine to do. We would then need to put aside money ourselves to have a savings account for GP or specialist consultations which wouldn't be covered (but with the savers options - this would just come out of your savings account which is basically the same money).

So that's the one we were leaning towards. But we're not sure if there are other benefits to the savers accounts and if it's more worthwhile to get that? (The main contribution works out to at least 2k more per year on the Essential Saver vs the Essential Core option ).

Do you find it super helpful to have the money already in the savings account?

How much money do you typically spend on a pediatrician visit? And how much annually if you can estimate?

This baby is our first so it will be the 3 of us.

Thanks so much!