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Health minister Joe Phaahla says that under the National Health Insurance (NHI), all South Africans will have access to free public and private healthcare \u2013 and taxpayers will pay for it.<\/p>\n
The National Assembly has passed the National Healthcare Insurance Bill, bringing the laws that will lay the foundation for the government\u2019s ambitious promise of universal healthcare one step closer to reality.<\/p>\n
The bill still has to make its way through the National Council of Provinces before being sent to the president to be signed into law.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the NHI Bill debate in parliament, Phaahla welcomed the passing of the bill, saying that it will \u201cusher major reforms in the health sector with an objective to build an equitable, accessible, affordable, and strengthened healthcare system in the country\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people of South Africa have access to the same clinic or hospital \u2013 either public or private \u2013 closer to where they live or work without paying \u2013\u00a0government will pay<\/strong>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Of course, when the minister says that the government will pay, he means that taxpayers will pay \u2013 and one of the biggest questions hanging over the controversial scheme is how exactly this will be done.<\/p>\n For years, the government has posited that the NHI scheme will be funded by pooling the money already spent on the private and public healthcare sectors. This amounts to a pool of around R460 billion that would ostensibly be at the state\u2019s disposal to execute this dream.<\/p>\n Approximately 52% of healthcare funding in South Africa is spent on the private sector by a small percentage of the population (16%). This is a major sticking point for the government, which finds this imbalanced and inequitable.<\/p>\n In effect, the government wants this R240 billion kitty, held by the private sector through medical aids and other spending by private households, to be under its control so that healthcare can be more evenly distributed among the population.<\/p>\n However, there\u2019s a major problem with this.<\/p>\n Naive dreams<\/strong><\/p>\n According to Discovery Health CEO, Ryan Noach, the government is being naive if it thinks that the spending on private healthcare will suddenly be diverted to the public coffers just because the state removes the option.<\/p>\n For many South Africans, private healthcare and things like medical aids are\u00a0already seen as a double tax<\/strong>, as\u00a0public funds sourced from taxes are already spent on public healthcare<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Given the poor state of public hospitals and clinics, taxpayers opt to pay extra from their after-tax income to make use of private facilities.<\/p>\n \u201cThese funds are well-protected by the medical schemes, which are effectively trust funds. They are functioning as mutual funds that hold the money on behalf of members,\u201d Noach said.<\/p>\n \u201cBy law, there is no way anybody could take or nationalise access to those funds. That would be completely beyond the realm of realistic thought.\u201d<\/p>\n Noach equated it to the government taking people\u2019s pension fund money or nationalising it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see no mechanism whatsoever to do that, and we think medical aid funds are well-protected by law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This would leave the government with limited options to raise the funds it needs to make the NHI work.<\/p>\n Speculation is already rife that the government will have to turn to implementing additional taxes on an ever-strained tax base, with focus on a narrowing pool of high-net worth-individuals to get it done.<\/p>\n It is worth noting of the 60 million people in South Africa who would need to make use of the NHI, only 7.4 million pay personal income tax \u2013 and an even smaller portion, around 164,000 people, pay 30% of the total personal income tax in the country.<\/p>\n The NHI\u2019s money bill \u2013 the financing part of the plan, which must come from the National Treasury \u2013 has not been published, leaving the question of funding hanging in the air even as the government rubber-stamps the bill through necessary processes.<\/p>\n In his address, Phaahla made it clear that,\u00a0one way or another, taxpayers will be footing the bill<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe NHI is a fund from which the government will buy healthcare services for South Africans from healthcare providers both in the public and private sector.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a fund to pay for healthcare, and\u00a0all of us will contribute to this fund through taxes and special contributions<\/strong>\u00a0in line with what we can afford.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will ensure that everyone is entitled to free healthcare when they need it, and there will be no fees charged at the facility because the fund will cover the costs of care,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Health minister Joe Phaahla says that under the National Health Insurance (NHI), all South Africans will have access to free public and private healthcare \u2013…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innov8ions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1304,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions\/1304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}