President Cyril Ramaphosa’s commitment to the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme ‘served to undermine any notional overtures that he made towards the vital importance of the private sector’, the Institute of Race Relations has said.
The NHI ‘will simply continue the trend of overbearing state interference and control over the economy that has wrought so much economic destruction over the last ten years’, the IRR said in a statement.
In his State of the Nation address earlier this month, Ramaphosa reiterated his government’s commitment to NHI, saying that ‘much progress is being made in preparing for the introduction of NHI’
The IRR pointed out the following recent news reports illustrated what healthcare under NHI would look like;
- Many Gauteng doctors who worked over the 80-hour overtime limit were not paid their salaries for January;
- Specialists and nurses are quitting South Africa’s public healthcare system;
- Professor Adam Mahomed, Head of Internal Medicine at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, stated nothing has been done to repair the facility, nine months after a devastating fire;
- Members of Parliament were shocked when presented with a report on the decrepit state of 1 Military Hospital – A failed repair and maintenance project accrued more than R156 million in irregular expenditure.
The IRR said its analysis of the NHI Bill showed there was nothing in the proposal ‘that would solve the endemic structural problems in the public sector, as typified by the above examples’.
IRR Deputy Head of Campaigns Chris Hattingh said: ‘Far from increasing access to quality healthcare for all citizens, monopolising the management of all healthcare services and workers in the hands of state will only bring all facilities in the private and public sectors to the same low level.’
Hattingh added: ‘If South Africans were shocked to learn of the corruption undertaken during the period of State Capture, they will likely not survive what is guaranteed to happen under an NHI. Instead of concentrating that amount of resources and political power in a single vehicle – thereby incentivising various forms of small and large corruption and cronyism – government should rather look at removing those regulations that inhibit the training of doctors and nurses, that disincentivise the building of new hospitals, and that discourage investment in medical equipment and technological advancements.’
The IRR said it was ‘likely that, if it is implemented, the NHI will see the largest exodus yet of healthcare professionals. Placing responsibility and control of all healthcare in the country in the hands of the state will lower service delivery quality, drive professionals overseas, and force the majority of citizens into relying on low-quality options, while more well-off citizens can afford to head overseas for their medical needs.’
[Image: https://pixabay.com/photos/surgery-hospital-1807541/]