The National Health Insurance (NHI), a long-promised initiative to provide universal healthcare coverage, is unlikely to fully materialise anytime soon, meaning that South Africans should keep hold of their medical aid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the view of Kevin Aron, the principal officer of Medshield, a prominent South African medical scheme, speaking in a recent interview with Business Talk<\/strong><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “The reality of the situation is that NHI is not going to be around for a very long time,” said Aron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The NHI is the ANC’s plan for universal healthcare coverage that was signed into law shortly before the elections in May 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a centralised, national insurance fund from which the government will buy healthcare services from healthcare providers in both the public and private sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it has proven contentious, particularly regarding concerns<\/strong><\/a> about its R1 trillion estimated price tag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “There needs to be a focus on fixing the public healthcare sector and less of a focus on this obsessiveness about an NHI which actually the country can’t afford and is going to take many years to roll out,” said Aron<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of 2024, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed in a written Parliamentary response that of the 3,092 public healthcare facilities inspected by the Office of Health Standards Compliance, only 1,226 or 39.65% comply with the legislated standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This means that the balance \u2013 1,866 or 60.35% of the facilities \u2013 do not comply with these standards and are not \u2018NHI-ready\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Medshield executive said that this underperformance is a key reason why many South Africans, even some of those struggling financially, choose private medical aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aron argues that the goal should be to get the public sector to offer quality care on par with or better than private healthcare, ensuring that those who cannot afford private medical aid have access to adequate, reliable, and safe medical services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also believes that the state of many hospitals is likely to contradict government pronouncements about the plan’s timeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also wrapped up against separate legal challenges brought separately by Solidarity, the Board of Healthcare Funders, and the South African Private Practitioners Forum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “NHI is not going to be around for a very long time… most of the public healthcare facilities will not actually meet the accreditation standards that will be set for NHI,” said Aron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He cautions against prematurely abandoning private medical aid in anticipation of NHI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “People should not be… reckless and jump off a medical scheme in the expectation that [this] year there’s going to be NHI. It’s not going to happen”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During a plenary session in the National Assembly in 2024, Motsoaledi dismissed a cost estimate of over R1 trillion for the NHI, labeling it as “mathematical hooliganism” and suggesting that it was intentionally inflated to provoke public opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He asserted that this figure was based on the faulty assumption that all NHI treatments would be conducted in private hospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Motsoaledi said that while NHI aims to “provide quality healthcare,” this does not inherently equate to expensive healthcare and criticised certain charges within the private healthcare sector as excessive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe current system is wrong. The patient is pitted against their own doctor,\u201d Motsoaledi said in an interview with Business Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen I was taught medicine, the first thing in an emergency (was) to check the ABCs \u2014 airways, breathing, circulation. Now the first thing an ambulance will check is your pocket,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The minister has also disagreed with the suggestion of low-cost benefit options for medical schemes, saying it would be wrong to provide poor people with less cover than rich people who could afford more generous options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat the NHI proposes is that all health facilities, public and private have to be accessible to all South Africans if and when their health needs demand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut this must be done, obviously, in an affordable manner,\u201d said Motsoaledi during oral replies of the National Assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Minister has set a deadline for regulations to be incorporated and promulgated by April 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHealth Minister’s view<\/h2>\n\n\n\n