Press Statement dated 18 July 2018
Trade union Solidarity today said that the ideal scenario of giving all citizens decent access to health care which the National Health Insurance Bill (NHI Bill) wants to put forward, will not materialise and, in reality, the proposed national health insurance will have the exact opposite effect.
According to Solidarity Research Institute researcher Morné Malan, the public seems not to be sufficiently concerned about the drastic impact implementation of this system will have. “In terms of government’s own models our economy is by no means growing fast enough to fund the proposal. Moreover, all pilot projects undertaken so far have failed dismally. The NHI amounts to nothing less than a de facto nationalisation of South Africa’s health care system,” Malan added.
Malan contends that if this bill is approved, the NHI will become the largest state enterprise in South Africa’s history. “To put it into perspective – the NHI would be bigger than Eskom and SAA put together, and judged by the current state of affairs at both Eskom and the SAA this move bodes ill for the future of health care,” Malan rightly pointed out.
South Africa is currently experiencing serious shortages in the numbers of both taxpayers and health practitioners alike, and the country stands to suffer further losses if the NHI is implemented and it results in those who can leave the country doing so.
Malan also says the NHI will deny health practitioners and other medical service providers the opportunity of exercising a choice when it comes to where to work and for what fees to work. Moreover, these practitioners will have to rely on government to pay them for their services. “We have already seen the dismal state of affairs the Compensation Fund is in and how poorly other government funds are run. That is why there is such major concern about practitioners being paid in time,” Malan said.
“In essence, this de facto nationalisation of our health care means that the country’s health services will be run by the very same bureaucrats who had to deal with the Life Esidimeni tragedy and the Charlotte Maxeke disaster,” Malan pointed out.
Issued by Morné Malan, Researcher: Solidarity Research Institute