While the National Health Insurance Bill is laying on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s desk, hours before he’s expected to sign it into law, it remains unclear how much longer it will take to for a collective consensus regarding the road ahead in addressing the systematically flawed issues embedded in South Africa’s healthcare system.
In fact, the Competition Commission’s Market Inquiry into the Private Healthcare Sector stated among its recommendations in September 2019, that the private healthcare sector was characterized by high and rising costs of healthcare and medical scheme cover. With these revelations in hand, it is clear at close range, that high costs of healthcare in the private healthcare sector invertedly makes healthcare increasingly inaccessible.
When juxtaposed with the Statistics South Africa 2020 General Household Survey findings, that an estimated 80% of the population in the country access healthcare through the public healthcare sector, the disparity is evident. To date, there have been widespread concerns from various spheres of the health fraternity, civil society, and opposition parties about the NHI Bill in its current form. Some of these include Section 9 of the Bill which establishes the National Health Insurance Fund as an autonomous public entity. It has been noted that this may place the fund vulnerable to fraud and corruption as a high risk.