Business Unity South Africa (Busa) says it is deeply concerned by the announcement that President Cyril Ramaphosa will sign the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill into law tomorrow given its many substantive and procedural constitutional flaws.
It said in a statement on Tuesday that it believed that the legislation, in its current form, was unimplementable and damaging to the country’s healthcare sector, to the economy more broadly and to investor confidence.
Cas Coovadia, the CEO of Busa said, “We fully support the objective of universal health coverage, however, the NHI Bill in its current form is unworkable, unaffordable, and not in line with the Constitution. What is especially troubling is that the President is proceeding with the Bill despite extensive constructive inputs made by a wide range of stakeholders, including doctors and healthcare professionals, civil society, public sector unions, academics and business.
“The unfortunate consequence is that this version will hamper, rather than promote, access to quality healthcare for all citizens in our country.”
“Consequently, we will pay close attention to the President’s announcement on Wednesday, based on which we will consider our options. Our subsequent actions will be guided by our belief that it is essential that we get the NHI right through all means still at our disposal, including appropriate legal interventions, so that the legislation that is finally implemented is in the best interest of our country, and all her people, for generations to come,” said Coovadia.
Meanwhile, ActionSA too says it is disappointed that President Ramaphosa has ignored the plea to avoid signing the NHI bill into law, in order to avoid state capture 2.0.
ActionSA said in a statement it wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa in December last year, advising him to not sign the NHI Bill, approved by Parliament into law in order for South Africa to avoid a second phase of state capture from occurring.
“While the NHI is well-intentioned to address healthcare inequality in South Africa, however, in its current form, it is opening the health system to corruption as we have seen during the Covid-19 pandemic when billions were lost through PPE (personal protective equipment) and related corruption,” it said.
ActionSA said the proposal was ill-conceived and would not address the shortcomings of the healthcare system in South Africa but present itself as a third tier in addition to the public and private healthcare.
“This will open up a loophole to budgetary irregularities that will enable corruption and collapse the healthcare system even further,” it said.
“The state has consistently proven unable to manage money or complex systems, as we have seen at Eskom, Transnet and Sassa, and the creation of another healthcare behemoth will therefore do little to address healthcare but instead open up the industry to state capture and abuse. It must be noted that the greatest problem in the South African healthcare system is not funding but the money lost through corruption and mismanagement,” it added.
BUSINESS REPORT