Save yourself from useless claims agents making empty promises and find yourself a proper medical aid.

Who would've thought that one of the most stressful parts of dealing with a family member who was newly diagnosed with cancer was trying to get Bonitas to do their job?! I'd strongly advise anyone to strongly reconsider joining Bonitas medical aid.

We had to pay ~R30k out of pocket to get blood tests done to confirm that my wife had cancer and she was subsequently registered on the oncology program with Bonitas after which we had to do more blood tests and a bone marrow aspirate to confirm exactly what time of blood cancer she had.

Despite being registered on the oncology program and the small print clearly stating "that all test relating to the diagnosis or management of all malignancies" are to be covered on the program, Bonitas still decided to pay a small portion of the costs for these tests out of our day-to-day which resulted in it quickly being depleted and the vast majority of the test being rejected.

This is where the fun starts... You'd think Bonitas being an established medical aid would know how to correct their mistake relating to a oncology claim... You'd be badly mistaking for making this assumption...

It's going on 3 months now of phone calls and endless waiting just to be sent from pillar to post and people making empty promises. I've learned the speed dial options by heart and know the drill by now. Let me break this down for you... You reach the claims switchboard, you give your reference number and you authenticate yourself... They put you on hold for ~15min reviewing your case and then tell you they need to chat to the oncology team or option B, they need to put you through to the oncology team to chat to them... That means another 10min hold or you chat to the oncology team and they confirm that the claim should be paid out of the oncology benefit but only the claims agents has the power to get this done... Back to a new claims agent who needs to review your case again... They then proceed to contradict everything the last 2 people have said and blame the lab for sending the wrong ICD10 codes (after you've had 10 calls to the lab to confirm that they've followed the correct procedure and submitted the right ICD10 codes to Bonitas). The new person tells you that the lab needs to resubmit the claim so they can process it again... You get the lab to do this and then the claim gets rejected again because it's a duplicate claim...

I'm sure you get the picture... An endless circle of hapless claims agents making empty promises and nothing gets done... Every now and again you get an email stating the claim will be reassessed and there is a 20-days waiting time, only for nothing to happen and the game starts again...

Anyone who has not yet abandoned reading this lengthy post, please save yourself all the trouble and find yourself a medical aid that actually wants to help you... It seems Bonitas is nothing more than another money-hungry institution that hinds behind ineffiecient call centers and useless claims agents when it comes to taking responsibility for anything.