Bloomberg reports that SA’s government has signalled that it is making headway in resolving an impasse over a new national medical insurance plan that critics say will infringe on the rights of patients and healthcare workers and sideline the private sector.

President Cyril Ramaphosa signed off on the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act shortly before May elections in which the ANC lost the parliamentary majority it had held for the past three decades. A government of national unity (GNU) was formed after the vote and some of its members oppose the NHI legislation, which provides a framework for citizens to secure universal access to health care through a centrally managed government fund that will buy services from public and private providers. The law as it stands would ban the private sector from offering cover for treatment to be available under NHI. An understanding has been agreed to drop a provision that would have caused the collapse of private medical-insurance companies, DA leader John Steenhuisen indicated on Wednesday. “I expect that the NHI Act will have to have some of its provisions redrafted. This is a compromise that has been reached,” Steenhuisen stated. A Presidency spokesman said Ramaphosa was committed to ironing out differences within his administration over the NHI and “one would not be entirely surprised if an agreement is reached in that regard.”

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Paul Vecchiatto & Mike Cohen at Moneyweb

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