702, Wednesday evening

Scheme administrator, we've ever seen it did it overnight. And a company called Private Health Administrators took over the clinical side, including authorizations. Med scheme says Bonitas asked for this quick change against their advice. It was very difficult. And we had all sorts of people who couldn't get treatment they needed, including cancer patients who couldn't get their chemotherapy authorized. There was a backlog of 10,000. Bonitas said that there were 10,000 legacy matters they blamed on Med Scheme. Bonitas has

Moved some of the cases, but Wendy says there's still so many cases coming, including a person who had to get a badly broken wrist repaired and was told to haggle over the price of the plates and screws that were needed. Wendy Nola, this has never happened to me. I've never heard of such a thing. Have you? No, nor had I, Stephen. So the case was that of Bonitas member Angie Willemse from Brakpan. She fractured her wrist on the 17th.

Of October, and there were two fractures. In fact, one of them was a displaced bone. And her orthopedic surgeon told her she needed surgery with plates and screws urgently to avoid possible permanent damage and loss of mobility in that wrist. If I started trying to heal with all these bones in the wrong place, essentially. So she has submitted the medical report and quotations for the op, which was to happen at Parklands Hospital, which is approved by Bonitas. But she didn't get the authorization.

She kept being told with management, with management was making call after call, and she was told she needed to get three quotations for the implants herself. Her surgeon only worked with one supplier, but Bonitas kept demanding two more quotes because obviously that's the system, and nobody was able to move beyond it. And she said, as a patient without medical expertise, I cannot reasonably be expected to obtain these quotations. So she says she called and you know.

Has repeatedly escalated with no meaningful feedback. And then, on one of those calls, a Bonitas agent came up with this fairly creative solution. So she has been posting on TikTok, and here on one of her posts, she says this. If we've got the clip to play, it took me 45 minutes to have the same discussion I had with them on the 21st of October, on the 23rd of October, on the 26th of October, where they promised me they'll get back to me.