South Africans could face another increase in their medical aid contributions next year, after the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) recommended that schemes use 3.8% as the anchor for their 2027 increases.

But this does not mean your medical aid contribution will only increase by 3.8%.

The figure is a starting point for medical schemes when setting their increases, and the final amount will depend on factors including healthcare costs and how much members are expected to use their benefits.

What does the 3.8% figure actually mean?

The CMS’s recommended 3.8% anchor is linked to inflation and is intended to provide a base point for medical scheme contribution increases.

However, it does not include what the CMS calls “reasonable utilisation estimates”, which is essentially the expected increase in members’ use of healthcare services.

This is where things become less straightforward for medical aid members.

The Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF) says the CMS has not explained what it considers to be a “reasonable utilisation” increase for 2027.

In previous years, the CMS has indicated that historical data suggests reasonable utilisation can add around 3.5 percentage points to increases.

Private healthcare inflation can also run around 2% to 3% above CPI, according to the BHF.

Based on these figures, the BHF says a “reasonable” increase for 2027 could potentially fall somewhere between 5.8% and 7.3%.

However, this is not a prediction from the CMS, and actual increases could be higher.

Why could medical aid increases be higher?

Healthcare costs are under pressure globally, including from new medical technology, medicines and increased use of healthcare services.

The BHF pointed to WTW’s 2026 Global Medical Trends Survey, which projects global medical costs to rise by 10.3% in 2026, following a projected 10% increase in 2025.

For the Middle East and Africa, WTW projects an 11.3% increase.

The survey covers 91 countries and identifies factors such as new medical technologies, pharmaceuticals, utilisation, fraud, waste and abuse as contributors to rising medical costs.

This doesn’t mean South African medical aid contributions will automatically rise by 11.3%. It does, however, highlight some of the cost pressures facing medical schemes.

What happened with medical aid increases in 2026?

The difference between the CMS benchmark and what medical schemes ultimately assumed for their increases can already be seen in the 2026 figures.

For 2026, the CMS recommended a 3.3% contribution increase.

However, a subsequent CMS evaluation found that the industry-wide overall weighted contribution increase assumption was 8.10%.

That was significantly higher than the 3.0% CPI assumption used at the time.

Healthcare costs also increased at rates above the CMS benchmark.

For 2026, the overall industry-weighted increase assumptions were 8.61% for specialist costs and 8.51% for hospital costs.

These figures were more than double the CMS’s 3.3% benchmark.

So, how much will your medical aid increase?

We don’t know yet.

The 3.8% figure is guidance from the CMS, rather than a final increase that every medical aid member will pay.

Individual medical schemes still need to submit their proposed contribution increases for approval.

This means members will have to wait for their particular scheme to announce its approved 2027 contribution increases before they know exactly how much their monthly payments will change.

The BHF supports efforts to keep increases as low as possible, but argues that simply setting an annual benchmark will not address the underlying costs.

“The BHF believes the 3.8% recommendation should therefore be accompanied by tangible action to contain those costs,” it said.

The organisation also questioned why the focus is placed on medical aid contributions without addressing the rising costs charged by healthcare providers.

“If schemes are expected to explain why contributions need to increase, we should also be asking why hospital, specialist and other healthcare costs are rising at the rates they are,” the BHF said.