Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi says hospital and specialists' costs have reached "abnormal" levels.Private healthcare prices rise above inflation every year, leading to costlier medical aid premiums.The knock-on effect, according to the Council for Medical Schemes, is that people are purchasing cheaper medical aid packages with fewer benefits.The Competition Commission is holding an inquiry into the costs of private healthcare.Motsoaledi, attending the first session of the inquiry's public hearings in Pretoria, told The Times that hospital and specialists' fees were "abnormal".He warned that South Africa was in danger of becoming like the US, which spends more on healthcare per head than any other nation.In 2004, the commission banned large hospital groups, medical aids and doctor groups from negotiating collectively on prices for appointments, operations and new procedures.But Motsoaledi said the negotiation ban had driven up prices."This is one of the events that changed the private healthcare market - to make it so abnormal. We need to bring the private market back to normality."Johann Serfontein, spokesman for the Healthman Consultancy, said the prohibition of collective negotiating between doctors' groups and all medical aids had affected prices."Patients are price sensitive and do not like co-payments, so doctors are forced to charge fees set by medical schemes or patients go elsewhere."He said medical aid administrators used an outdated 2006 price list and then set prices that were not fair and did not reflect the actual cost of the procedure."The costs of procedures on the 2006 reference price list were arrived at arbitrarily and did not reflect the actual practice expenses that healthcare practitioners faced."Motsoaledi said another factor driving up prices was that patients went to specialists instead of general practitioners, and specialists charge more for simple procedures."It was not like this when I was a medical student," said Motsoaledi...