Halt in NHI drive an opportunity to dump catastrophic scheme and avoid costly 'life-shedding'
30 November 2023
The IRR is heartened by what appears to be a deliberate halt in the ANC's attempt to bulldoze the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme into law. This fundamentally flawed policy initiative will nationalise private healthcare, unleash a government takeover of all healthcare spending, and initiate a new era of state capture and massive corruption.
Says Hermann Pretorius, IRR head of strategic communications: "Any stalling of the reckless push by the ANC in government and Parliament to implement the NHI is encouraging. However, this is definitely not the end of the matter, nor the end of the IRR's determined efforts to stop the NHI – the Eskom of healthcare that promises only to trigger life-shedding.
"Advocates of the NHI have championed the scheme as the solution for everything from Covid-19 to the collapse of state-run healthcare. These advocates, like Dr Nicholas Crisp, are taking the people of South Africa for fools. The assumption that the state has the right to confiscate the after-tax money spent by individuals on their healthcare is perverse. Beyond this, it is pure fiction that the NHI could compensate for the failures of government-run healthcare services across the country.
"On the question of the cost of the NHI, government has been as clear as mud. At the lower end of the spectrum, the NHI's annual cost has been placed at around R200 billion. At the higher end – bearing in mind that this government hardly has a reputation for spending prudence and efficiency – estimates put the NHI's fiscal burden closer to R700 billion. Yet the government has been unable simply to spell out what the NHI will actually cost.”