Pretoria - The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria this week suspended the implementation of new medical tariffs promulgated by Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula and implemented by the Road Accident Fund (RAF).
Judge Ronel Tolmay suspended the implementation of these tariffs retrospectively to January this year.
She ruled her order would remain in place pending the outcome of a further application in May, in which the court would be asked to review and set aside the tariffs.
The new tariffs were promulgated by Mbalula in August for medical professionals in the private sector to be 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 would most likely in most cases not be able to render the emergency or long-term care many of these victims would require, Judge Tolmay was told.
The National Council for Persons with Disabilities and the Law Society of South Africa launched the urgent application as they are of the view that the new tariff structure would have disastrous consequences for road accident victims in need of emergency or specialised care.
The Law Society of SA, which welcomed the order, said its argument was that the impugned tariffs were patently unlawful and unconstitutional.
The reason for this argument, it said, was that tariffs were so high accident victims without means or medical aid would no longer be able to obtain the care they need in the private sector.
Given that the public sector could not provide this care – and where they could, it was not with sufficient quality or urgency – the result of the implementation of the impugned tariffs would be that many thousands of road accident victims would die or be permanently disabled.
According to the applicants, this renders the impugned tariffs irrational, unreasonable and an unjustified limitation of the rights of access to health care and bodily integrity.
The tariffs were unlawful for other reasons as well, which include that they were promulgated without complying with various stipulated and compulsory procedures, the Law Society said.
Judge Tolmay, meanwhile, also awarded a punitive costs order against the RAF and ordered it to pay the applicants’ cost of the urgent application.
This was on account of the contemptuous manner in which the RAF conducted its opposition to the application by filing its answering affidavit only days before the urgent court hearing and much later than the date directed by the court.
The court also expressed its displeasure with the RAF’s refusal to acquiesce to the applicants’ repeated request made for its undertaking not to implement the impugned tariffs pending the outcome of the next stage of the application, especially in circumstances where the minister withdrew his opposition to this leg of the proceedings.
Judge Tolmay invited the CEO of the RAF, Collins Letsoalo, and its chairperson, Thembelihle Msibi, to file affidavits in the next part of the application to explain why they should not be held liable personally to pay the punitive costs order in the course of opposing Part A of the application.
While the minister and the RAF are empowered by law to set tariffs governing the medical costs payable by the fund regarding road accident victims, the Law Society believes that the impugned tariffs are inadequate and deny injured road accident victims who are without medical aid or financial means access to private health care.
This meant these road accident victims had no option but to submit to treatment at public hospitals, which were already overburdened. This affects not only road accident victims but all public health patients, they argued.
Before the promulgation of the impugned tariffs, there were many private hospitals and health-care practitioners who were willing to treat road accident victims in the knowledge that they would eventually be paid in full.
In addition, there will be further risk to the lives of road accident victims, and of possible disabilities, if they must be transported to a public hospital further away when there is a private hospital nearby which, as indicated, has more resources and capacity .
Before publishing the impugned tariffs, a draft tariff was published for comment. The Law Society submitted comments pointing out that any tariff had the effect of denying poor road accident victims access to private health care, yet the minister went ahead, said Mabaeng Lenyai, president of the Law Society.
Pretoria News