BusinessLive reports that business lobby group Sakeliga has pushed back against Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s attempt to pause the constitutional challenges to the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act with a new, two-pronged legal attack of its own.

The controversial NHI Act, signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in May 2024, aims to establish universal health coverage in which a central NHI fund will purchase services for all eligible patients. The NHI Act faces eight separate legal challenges from organisations representing doctors, medical schemes, private hospitals, trade union Solidarity, Sakeliga and the Western Cape government. In August the minister asked the High Court to consolidate all the cases that had by that stage been launched and suspend all challenges to the constitutional validity of the legislation until the legal attacks on the President’s decision to sign the Act had been resolved.

Sakeliga has now filed papers opposing the Minister’s stay application, along with a conditional counter-application asking the court to interdict the state from implementing NHI if the Minister succeeds in pausing the constitutional challenges to the Act. If the minister’s stay application were to be successful, it would suspend judicial scrutiny of the NHI Act while the controversial policy was implemented, said Sakeliga.

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

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