An organisation for medical professionals has made the explosive allegation that SA’s top medical aids are guilty of racial profiling in their efforts to combat medical aid fraud. The Daily Maverick reports that all insurance companies face a high level of fraud, but it’s a little-known fact that it’s an extreme problem for medical aid schemes. Recently, at the Council for Medical Schemes’ inaugural Fraud, Waste and Abuse Summit, it was estimated that fraudulent practices cost members between R22bn and R28bn a year. That would constitute about 25% of all premiums paid by SA’s 8.8m medical aid members. SA’s largest medical aid scheme, Discovery, for example, investigates about 3 500 potential fraud cases a year, and 82% of them turn out to be valid. With medical aid fraud, it’s costly for the medical aids to investigate and the nature of the fraud is often complex.