THE Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS), a registered medical scheme specifically for public service employees launched in January 2006, has experienced phenomenal growth, with 300 new members joining per day over the past month. GEMS' Principal Officer, Dr Eugene Watson, says that membership now stands at 20 000 families or 50 000 individuals, forty percent of which had previously not had medical cover, with the sixty other percent having "voted with their feet", moving from other medical schemes. He said that he was excited to see the upsurge in confidence by government employees, adding that GEMS had not only grown substantially, but had shown an increasing daily growth rate for more than 200 consecutive days. He said that members liked what the scheme had to offer, no frills, value for money and, more importantly, real savings.
Watson attributed this growth to the comprehensive rollout of the scheme's communications plan and member enrolment initiatives, as well as growing awareness of the new 75 percent subsidy for government employees. Those who earn more than R60 000 a year receive a 75 percent subsidy up to a maximum of R1 900 a month for a family of 5 on GEMS. Civil servants who are already members of open medical schemes continue to get a subsidy of up to R1 014 a month. A further measure to promote access to GEMS for all employees includes the 100 percent subsidy for which employees earning below R60 000 and joining GEMS' Sapphire option are eligible. Watson said that there are about 325 000 employees in the public sector who earn less than R60 000 a year. Of those, an estimated 200 000 do not currently have any kind of medical scheme cover.