(in pic - Ricardo Lagos, former President of Chile addressing guests during public debate on the NHI) Minister of Health, Dr Zweli Mkhize and The Elders participate in a public debate on the NHI reforms at the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, Johannesburg. 02/09/2019. Jairus Mmutle/GCIS
The South African Rainbow Alliance (Sara) president Colleen Makhubele warned that the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill will be rescinded in a few weeks’ time.
Makhubele suggested that the ANC will not win the 2024 general elections taking place next Wednesday. Whoever will emerge victorious, according to her, will rescind the bill, which has been criticised by opposition parties, civil society and hundreds of citizens.
Makhubele was speaking during Independent Media’s political dialogue hosted by The Star at the Joburg Theatre on Wednesday.
President Cyril Ramaphosa last week signed the NHI Bill signed into law which, he said, directed the transformation of the South Africa’s health-care system to achieve universal coverage for health services and, through this, overcome critical socio-economic imbalances and inequities of the past.
Makhubele asked how the government could sign bill in to law while failing in pivotal sectors such as the public transport.
“We’ve got 4000 health facilities in this nation that gets R400 billion every year to fix the infrastructure, to improve the quality of the health care, hire proper nurses but cadre deployment has destroyed that, they can’t even fix windows. Now you want to migrate those people because those public facilities are none compliant by hygiene standards now you want to migrate them to a private sector because you are running away from your failures, it does not work that way.
“We are going to fix the public health infrastructure, we are going to fix… bring in proper doctors. You can’t have nurses and cadres managing Chris Hani Baragwanath (Academic) Hospital, managing big facilities. What do you think is going to happen? Collapse.
“Besides not having money for NHI this minute, just the ideology behind it that each and everyone must be dependent on the state. We want self-reliant citizens that are at work and earn income that, will have a choice to go to a public or private hospital or public or cultivate education,” said Makhubele.
She said Ramaphosa instituted a commission on the health sector in 2019 for corruption, out of that R300bn, about R60bn went to corruption.
“They can’t account for it, irregular expenditure, fraud, all sorts of nonsense. The bulk of the money goes to malpractice. Around R180bn goes to legal claims because of botched operations... Who have we employed in our hospitals? Now you tell me you want to pull everything in one NHI,” said Makhubele.
“Government cannot manage 16 million people – they want to manage 60 million people it’s not going to happen!” Makhubele said.
Sara is not the only organisation opposing the NHI, some political parties and organisations have promised to go to court.
EFF’s Carl Niehaus said his party rejected the NHI Bill.
“The signed NHI Bill is presented as a solution to the universal health coverage and that is totally misguided, disingenuous. It is very opportunistic that Ramaphosa signed the bill in a rush just a couple of days before the election date.
“The ANC as the outgoing ruling party is using such an important intervention for political point scoring. This is disguising. The South African health-care system has completely collapsed,” said Niehaus.
The Star
ntombi.nkosi@inl.co.za
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