ANA reports that trade union Solidarity said on Wednesday the SA’s proposed national health insurance (NHI) would have the opposite effect of its aim to give all citizens decent access to health care.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced the NHI bill last month, detailing a health financing system designed to pool funds to provide access to affordable health care. Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) researcher Morné Malan pointed out on Wednesday that in terms of the government’s own models, the economy was not growing fast enough to fund the proposal, and all pilot projects undertaken so far had “failed dismally”. He went on to observe: ““The public seems not to be sufficiently concerned about the drastic impact implementation of this system will have. The NHI amounts to nothing less than a de facto nationalisation of South Africa’s healthcare system.” Malan also pointed out that SA was experiencing serious shortages in the numbers of both taxpayers and health practitioners alike, and stood to suffer further losses if the NHI was implemented and resulted in those that could leave the country doing so.
- Read this report in full at The Citizen
- Read Solidarity’s press statement in this regard at SA Labour News
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page