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CEO of Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA), Busi Mavuso, says that government seems to be ignoring all the red flags around the National Health Insurance (NHI), and has gone as far as calling the plan “utterly unworkable”.

Although the NHI bill has been in the works for a few years now, the BLSA believes that people have almost given up arguing against it as it has become clear government (read: ANC) is ignoring all comments from industry experts as they plough forth with their ‘we know best’ attitude.

It seems that most South Africans are content to let it just disintegrate until we are worse off than before.

“Government is ignoring that eventually, the whole charade will collapse.”

The NHI system establishes the government as the sole buyer of medical services in the country, with plans to be rolled out in phases starting in 2026.

It plans to use funds from the NHI Fund to provide healthcare to all citizens, both at private and public healthcare facilities. Nobody seems to be able to tell how this will all be funded, but the government itself has indicated that it will most likely be the taxpayers (those that still remain) who will have to fund this latest f*ck-up.

According to Mavuso, the NHI has some seriously negative consequences on top of being overly ambitious and unclear.

“The world it envisages – in which almost all of the private healthcare system is shut down and replaced with a government scheme – is impossible.”

Many researchers and analysts believe the bill is bizarre and impossible to implement in any reasonable timeframe, adding that the government is feeding a pipedream.

According to Mavuso, it appears that government is not really focussing on how it will work, but rather on the ‘optics’. In other words, all show and no substance. This could then prove to be the most ridiculous election campaigning trick ever.

“It appears to rather be about signalling, in which some parts of government seem to think that putting the bill into our law books will be seen positively by an important constituency, and that is enough.”

BLSA believes that Treasury will make noise about attempting to find the funds, but with the myriad of problems draining our fiscus, they will not be able to find the money.

Ultimately, the health system will be forced to ‘appear’ to be implementing it, setting up fatcat boards and committees, but with existing facilities in a terrible state, this will all just be grandstanding.

The NHI bill is now going through the National Council of Provinces. Following this, it will be sent to the president to be signed into law. Mavuso hopes that at this stage the penny will have dropped, and the government will realise there is no workable way that the bill can be effectively implemented.

BLSA is, of course, raising concerns that have been echoed by almost every person in South Africa who doesn’t leech off the government. The only people who will be benefitting from this abortion are the tenderpreneurs and, of course, the glorious freedom-fighting ANC themselves. Quite why our own Peter Pan is cheerleading the mess is still a mystery.

Somebody is set to make a boatload of money with the NHI, so it will be pushed through. It’s definitely NOT about access to quality healthcare for all, otherwise, we would have fixed our existing healthcare services.

It’s about control and access to huge amounts of money. That’s it.

[source:businesstech]