Pretoria - The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, is due to hear an urgent application to stop Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula and the Road Accident Fund (RAF) from implementing new medical tariffs.
The new tariffs were promulgated by the minister in August and will see medical professionals in the private sector being paid reduced tariffs.
Should the new medical tariffs not be scrapped, they would see thousands of vehicle accident victims having to turn to the already overburdened public health sector, which will most likely in most cases not be able to render the emergency or long-term care many of these victims will require.
This is according to the National Council for Persons with Disabilities, which said the new tariff structure would have disastrous consequences for road accident victims in need of emergency or specialised care.
The tariffs, which were promulgated in a 400-page document, are so low that road accident victims without medical aids will not be able to get care at private health facilities.
Those who cannot afford private medical treatment will have no option, but to turn to state facilities, it is said.
This is because very few doctors in the private sector will treat a patient at the prescribed rates.
“In many cases these patients will not get the care they need in the public sector either, as it often cannot provide the immediate or long-term care needed by many accident victims, especially those rendered paraplegic or quadriplegic, said Therina Wentzel, national director of the council, in an affidavit filed at court.
The body will ask the court to interdict the minister and the RAF from implementing the new tariff structure, pending the outcome of further legal proceedings to review and set aside the tariffs. It is bringing the application in the public’s interest, especially as South Africa is regarded as one of the worst countries in terms of road accident statistics.
One of the concerns of the National Council for Persons with Disabilities is that if road accident victims do not urgently receive the medical attention they need and have to rely on the public sector, which may not even be able to assist them, many more could be rendered disabled due to their injuries.
Another worrisome aspect mentioned in the court papers is that the minister and the fund intended the new tariff structure to be implemented retrospectively to last year.
Wentzel said medical tariffs payable by the RAF should be reasonable and this issue should have been vented with the medical profession before it was simply promulgated.
She said road accident victims were in a unique position in that they could not claim against those who actually injured them; they were totally reliant upon the RAF to pay their costs.
Their vulnerability was further worsened by the fact that the public health-care system was wanting, Wentzel stated.
She added that there was an obligation on the minister and the RAF to set medical tariffs that were reasonable to ensure that these victims received the care they needed.
But, she said, as the tariffs now stand, practitioners and service providers such as private ambulance companies were unwilling to assist at the given tariffs, which were said to be grossly below the industry rates.
The minister and the RAF were requested to put the new tariff structure on ice pending the outcome of review proceedings, which would make the application for an interdict unnecessary.
But Wentzel said neither the RAF nor the minister had responded to this request. It is, meanwhile, feared that the new tariffs can come into operation any day.
Neither of these parties have yet filed their opposing papers to this application, which is earmarked to be heard in December.
Pretoria News