An Ethical and Legal Analysis of South African Medical Schemes

The landscape of South African healthcare is divided into two distinct halves - Government funded healthcare, in which patients attend at state hospitals and clinics free of charge, or private healthcare, in which the patient themself pays for the services rendered by the doctors, hospitals and other medical facilities. Because the costs associated with private healthcare are so prohibitively expensive, most people who attend at private healthcare facilities become members of medical schemes, which are privately run funds that contribute (to one extent or another, depending on the scheme type) to the costs of private healthcare. This book exmines the legal and ethical relationship between such medical schemes and their members who are dependant upon the schemes for the funding of their private healthcare.