There was no dissent over the moral and social imperatives of implementing the
National Health Insurance (NHI) during the 10th Annual Conference of the Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF) in Sun City, North West from 31 August to 2 September 2009.
Instead, there was a consensus from the presentations that the current inequitable, two-tier healthcare system was unsustainable, and that the problems besetting healthcare required interventions both at the public and private sectors.
The Deputy Minister of Health Dr Molefi Sefularo said that the government had the mandated duty to take a leadership role in the functioning of the national health system through the creation of social safety net that would ensure that people had financial risk protection from catastrophic healthcare expenditures.
"It is within this context that the present dominant role of medical schemes in healthcare funding needs to be reviewed. The current concentration of healthcare resources in one sector that benefits the few is not what we envisage," said Dr Sefularo in his closing address today, 2 September 2009, read on his behalf by Dr Aquina Thulare, the Department of Health's Internal Consultant of the NHI.
The proposed National Health Insurance model calls for key adjustments that have to be made in the national health system in relation to four equally important areas, namely the revenue collection and pooling of funds, purchasing of services and the provision of these services to the general public.
Enquiries:
Charity Bhengu
Cell: 083 679 7424
Issued by: Department of Health
2 September 2009
Source: Department of Health (http://www.doh.gov.za/)
