Discovery My Pregnancy programme benfits complain

According to Discovery on their site, we are told to apply for “maternity benefits” once you find out that you are expecting in order to receive all these wonderful benefits that come with it i.e blood test and doctors visit. I have since found out that it does not really work how it is advertised. There are so many terms and conditions that they do not inform you of, you only find out about them when it is time for Drs and service providers claim and all of a sudden the claims go off your MSA account instead of the “maternity benefits”.

We app**** for this benefit on 02 July 2019 . We were going to all the Gynecologist appointments and were all covered, first issue came when bloods were taken for baby’s downs syndrome genome. I received a call from service provider after the test was done to let me know that not all the tests were paid for and I was owing R671.50. When I called Discovery to find out why, I was told by one their call center agent that the test is not covers under the maternity benefits and I was supposed to call for an authorization prior to the test being done.

In December 2019 my baby girl was born, when we went to the gynecologist for the 6 weeks post-natal visit which is included under the maternity benefits as “Discovery says” the claim went out of my MSA amounting R1597.60. On Tuesday 11 February 2020 I called Discovery and on spoke to a lady named Dudu who gave me reference number *** and informed me that she has lodged a query with the claims team, she was supposed to call me back once she had any form of feedback. I never got the call, on Friday 14 February 2020 same week decided to call again. Now I spoke to someone else who today informs me that the gynae used wrong codes when claiming, when I ask for the right code I was told that they cannot provide me with it and the Dr should know.

It seems like Discovery markets all these fancy and amazing benefits but at the end of the day the client has to foot the bill. They never offer to help but rather force the blame on the client/service providers.