The party’s Free State leader and Shadow Minister of Health, Patricia Kopane, on Wednesday issued a statement saying that while it acknowledged and affirmed the need for universal healthcare, it did not believe the bills gazetted for public comment on June 21 would be able to achieve it.

Kopane said that the party believed the bills are “little more than an attempt by the [African National Congress] government to co-opt private sector healthcare and its clients to remedy the rapidly failing public sector healthcare”.

She pointed out that it will prove “fatal” to both sectors, as pilot projects have already failed “abysmally”.

“The NHI Fund will dwarf the Compensation Fund, an entity of the Department of Labour tasked with providing compensation to those who suffered workplace injuries, which is notoriously slow to pay out and, as a consequence, is largely shunned by medical practitioners.

“It will also be larger than the Road Accident Fund which, due to chronic mismanagement, is practically bankrupt with close to R190 billion in contingent liabilities and recorded losses of R34 billion in the 2016/17 financial year alone,” she said.

She presented the DA’s plan, called Our Health Plan (OHP), which she says will offer “the most credibly and workable option that seeks to ensure that no person is denied quality healthcare because they are poor”.

According to Kopane, the OHP includes:

• Faster delivery: Our Health Plan will provide quality healthcare to all within 5-8 years, whereas NHI will take up to 15 years to fully implement;
• Affordability: Our Health Plan will provide quality healthcare which is affordable, and can be implemented using our current health budget. This would mean that medical aid contributions would no longer be tax deductible. The additional revenue would go to reducing the costs of medical aid;
• Fairness: by bringing the medical aid tax credit on budget, and allocating some of it to build better services in the public health sector, those with medical aid are cross-subsidising those without, an act of health justice; and
• Accountability: implementation of localised accountability systems to hospitals and district health authorities, as well as decentralises decision-making.

She adds that the aspects of the OHP have been implemented in the Western Cape, with success.

“Universal healthcare is achievable in South Africa, but the National Health Insurance and the Medical Schemes Amendment Bills will not achieve it. Rather, a failed attempt at rolling out NHI will put us back even further,” she warned.

SA Breaking News