Response to DA Claims
The Ministry of Health has noted with concern the statement by the DA suggesting that the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi have made an unlawful request to the Council for Medical Schemes for access personal information. The DA further claim that this information asked for is too much and unconstitutional and collected for research purposes.
The National Department of Health had planned to develop a benefits registry which has been included in the annual performance plan of the department since 2014/15. Our annual performance plans have been approved by parliament for the past 3 years. Developing the national registry has been part of the approved plans and no Member of Parliament ever raised a query.
There are two parts to this registry. Firstly, the registry is not to collect personal or private information as the DA claims but to ensure that the public sector is able to identify medical scheme members so that their scheme can be billed for services rendered in the public sector. A number of medical schemes have contracts with the public sector for their members to access services.
However their members fail to identify themselves and/or provide accurate information regarding their scheme so that their scheme can be billed. Consequently a number of medical scheme members are accessing services in the public sector for free whereas they are being billed for these services in the private sector.
Secondly, and separate from this we are also seeking information regarding the profile of each medical scheme option, burden of disease of each option, distribution of scheme members, etc. The objective here is to obtain summary information NOT individual personal or private information.