For those of you who don’t follow my personal blog, The Blessed Barrenness, I have been fighting a battle with Discovery Health over the underwriting they had on adding adopted children/babies as dependents to their medical aid and hospital plans. I was really furious when we attempted to add Hannah to our hospital plan as their policies on adoption were out of date and not inline with the new child act and I felt discriminated against as an adoptive parents.
After a very angry blog post about the issue, which then happened to come to the attention of policy makers at Discovery, thanks to the assistance of Nicole, I am thrilled to let you all know that Discovery have amended their adoption policies with immediate effect, bringing them inline with the current Child Act and offering the same benefits to adoptive parents as biological parents, regardless of when your the adoption placement occurred.
This is the official communication I received from Dinesh, who is part of the marketing team at Discovery:
Adopted child:
We will add an adopted child under the age of 18 to the adoptive parents’ membership, free of underwriting, if we receive the application for the child within 90 days of the adoption. The first month’s premium for the child will not be billed. We need legal proof of adoption to add the child to the parents’ membership.
If we receive the application to add an adopted child under the age of 18 to the scheme, more than 90 days after the adoption, we will add the child to the adoptive parents’ membership and apply full underwriting. The first month’s premium for the child will be billed. We need legal proof of adoption to add the child to the parents’ membership.
If the adoption of a child under the age of 18 is still in progress, the main member and a social worker need to complete the Discovery Health affidavits. We will also accept a letter from the social worker or court, confirming that the adoption is in progress. In this case, the child’s membership will be free of underwriting if that the application is done within 90 days of the child being placed in the adoptive parents’ care. The first month’s premium for the child will not be billed.
For any queries, please contact Discovery Health at healthinfo@discovery.co.za, or 0860 99 88 77
