Business Times reports that sweeping changes to medical schemes on the road to National Health Insurance (NHI) came a step closer last week when the medical scheme regulator announced the potential closure of small schemes.  

The rationalisation of scheme options and an accelerated alignment of scheme benefits with the government's health policy was also announced.  Moreover, the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) will start consulting on how to make scheme membership mandatory for all who can afford it.  There are 83 medical schemes with 323 options for 8.8 million lives.  The CMS is considering dissolving 29 medical schemes that have fewer than 6,000 members to better cross-subsidise risk.  The health department has set 31 January as the deadline for development of a plan to create bigger risk pools to lower contributions.

• Read this report by Laura du Preez in full at BusinessLive
• See too, Less choice, but also smaller bills as NHI powers up, at BusinessLive

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