The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has given its support to the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) – but warned that it should not come at a further cost for the country’s workers.<\/p>\n
The NHI Bill is currently undergoing a public consultation process, with a number of healthcare, civil society and political groups presenting on why the new system should or should not be introduced.<\/p>\n
In its presentation to parliament this week, Cosatu said that the NHI must be funded via:<\/p>\n
The trade federation added that general national revenue will play a key role in financing NHI, and that additional funding mechanisms will be needed over and above the tax hikes.<\/p>\n
“Economic growth is critical to increasing revenue, especially with competing & pressing pressures. The tax net will need to be expanded and made more progressive and new taxes targeted at the wealthy,” it said.<\/p>\n
Bad idea\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In a separate presentation, civil society group AfriForum slammed the proposed introduction of the NHI, saying it will lead to the nationalisation and monopolisation of the health sector, as well as the elimination of private medical funds.<\/p>\n AfriForum provided a number of reasons why this bill would be catastrophic for South Africa. The civil rights organisation argued that the proposed bill, like other state-owned companies, would be susceptible to corruption and maladministration, and also that its implementation would be unaffordable for the taxpayer and would lead to the mass emigration of health workers.<\/p>\n “The government is using NHI as way of garnering votes from poor South Africans, who have legitimate grievances regarding the quality of health care in South Africa. However, NHI will not solve these problems.<\/p>\n “On the contrary, it will lessen the total access to quality health care by destroying the private health care sector,\u201d Reiner Duvenage, AfriForum\u2019s campaign officer for Strategy and Content, said during his presentation.<\/p>\n “NHI is a project for which the true costs and service needs are completely unknown, but despite this, is still being foisted on the already over-burdened taxpayer. By looking at the track record of state-owned monopoly enterprises, NHI will be severely burdened by corruption, excessive bureaucracy, mismanagement and inefficiency,” Duvenage concluded.<\/p>\n
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