By Foster Mohale
The passing of the National Health Insurance (NHI) by the National Assembly has been met with mixed reactions between the privileged minority and poor majority, between the “haves” who are medically insured and constitute about 16% of the country`s population who want the status quo to remain.
On the other hand, the “have-nots” who constitute 84% and solely rely on the overburdened and underfunded public health facilities cannot wait to realise the envisaged access to quality and affordable healthcare which meets their health needs without financial hardships.
Access to healthcare is a human right as provided for in section 27 of the Constitution. It is a pity that the attainment of this obvious human right remains negotiable and subjected to a vote by the minority on behalf of the majority, and subjected to needless legal interpretations by those with legal muscles.
South Africa will remain one of the most unequal societies in the world, unless the citizenry stand up and demand an acceleration of the transformation agenda to address the current imbalances created by contentious apartheid government legacy and poverty levels.
The government is committed to achieving universal access to quality health care services to all, both rich and poor, young and old, rural and urban. Unfortunately, this noble objective to be achieved through the NHI has been intentionally misapprehended by its detractors with the loudest voice and deliberately condemned and miscommunicated to mislead the most vulnerable and ordinary people in Bolobedu in Limpopo, Dutywa in the Eastern Cape and Pella in the North West, to justify their argument and political narrative.
The misinformation about the NHI deprives even the private health sector providers from realising how much they will benefit from the opportunity to contract with NHI to provide health services to the broader public, rather than the small proportion for which they currently provide services. Under the NHI, they will be able to provide services to patients throughout the year, not even worried about depletion of funds of patients at any stage, while patients not worried about co-payments.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to notice that those who feel threatened by universal health coverage are just not ready to sit in the same waiting area with unemployed rural men and women at private health facilities, and chose to label the NHI as ill-conceived and disastrous government policy.
Unfortunately, some of them, do not offer alternative and viable options for the country to realise non-negotiable Universal Health Coverage to ensure that every person gets the healthcare that they need, when they need it, where they need it, and without incurring financial hardship. My children would always remind me that sharing is caring.
The country does not deserve another unled revolution like the 1976 Soweto Youth Uprisings which protested against the apartheid government’s insistence that the Afrikaans language be used as the medium of instruction in schools. The Free Must Fall generation has done their part to force the doors of learning to be opened to all academically deserving and financially needy students, of which the majority of them are the children of the unemployed, petrol attendants, security guards, domestic workers, farm workers, cleaners, waiters and waitresses, shop keepers to have equal access to institutions of their choices, including the previously white universities. This has ended academic exclusions against many young people with a promising future.
About R27 000 is spent each year on each person who uses the private sector while only R5 200 is spent each year per person who is dependent on the public sector. As a country, we spend huge amounts of money on health care for very few people and very little on the majority.
Our total spending on health care is far more than any country of similar size and economic activity to ours. Thus, we need to spend more efficiently and equitably. The Covid-19 National Vaccination Programme has proven how the NHI will work to ensure equity in healthcare service. No one can argue that diseases don`t discriminate and neither should we provide different treatments for the same disease to different patients because of their socio-economic status, race, gender, age or any other personal quality.
Just like Martin Luther King Jr had a dream that one day his four children would be judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character, so we must dream that our health system will care for all of us based only on our need for health care.
*Foster Mohale is the Spokesperson for the National Department of Health
** The views expressed in this article are not those of Independent Media.