NHI forges ahead despite misgivings

LegalBrief

National Health Insurance (NHI) is coming, with the NHI Bill handed to Parliament on Friday last week, notes a Business Day report. However, a detailed 200-page document on the 11 pilot projects reveals that children identified as needing healthcare didn’t get it, there were incomplete infrastructure projects and computers were sent to clinics without access to the Internet. After calls by opposition parties and organisations, including the Treatment Action Campaign, the evaluation of pilot projects was released on Friday by Health Minister Zweli Mkhize. It was conducted from November 2017 to 2018 by private consultancy Genesis Analytics supported by PwC, the Wits University Centre for Health Policy and Insight Actuaries and Consultants. But due to data-quality problems it cannot be concluded that NHI pilot projects – costing more than R4bn over five years – improved each district’s health. However, NHI is going ahead, said Mkhize, who welcomed the pilot-project evaluation report as a ‘mirror’ to help the Health Department improve.

Full Business Day report

 

Mkhize said medical aid schemes would not be banned when National Health Insurance was rolled out. Addressing the Board of Healthcare Funders conference last week, he said the role of medical aid schemes would change with NHI, reports TimesLIVE. He explained that first and foremost the NHI single fund would buy services for the whole country, and the medical aids could step in. 'Are we banning medical aids? No. That role is going to keep changing as NHI opens up right now. We are engaging with medical aids. We will change the way medical aids work.' However, he said people with private healthcare could not see a specialist if they wished without good reason. He complained that many people visited specialists for treatment that GPs could give. Instead, specialists needed to treat the sickest South Africans, he said. He also said the private medical industry was lobbying against NHI but he would not allow them to derail it. 'Are you saying because of private self-interest, must we compromise the lives of South Africans?'

Full TimesLIVE report