BL Premium reports that Parliament’s health committee has run out of time to process the controversial National Health Insurance Bill in the National Assembly before the ANC’s elective conference after a key meeting with the health department was delayed.

The NHI Bill is the government’s first piece of legislation in realising its plan for universal free health coverage. Two weeks ago, the committee’s chair, Kenneth Jacobs, said MPs aimed to have the bill adopted by the National Assembly before parliament rises on 6 December, a little over a week before the ANC conference begins on 16 December. At that stage, a meeting had been scheduled for input from the health department on the issues raised during public submissions and detailed deliberations by MPs on the bill. However, the meeting with the health department was postponed for a week, leaving the committee without enough time to complete its work on the bill. Its last meeting for the year is on Friday. Nicholas Crisp, the health department’s deputy director-general for NHI, said last week’s meeting with the committee had to be postponed because both he and health minister, Joe Phaahla, had been among the delegation accompanying President Cyril Ramaphosa on a state visit to the UK. “There is still a lot of work to do,” said Jacobs. Parliament would reconvene after the State of the Nation address in February and the committee should complete its work on the bill in “a month or less”, he indicated.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

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