National Health Insurance (NHI).
The long-awaited National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill has been released and is poised to begin its passage through parliament. The Bill contains the biggest health reforms in post-apartheid South Africa and is the first piece of enabling legislation for realising the government’s ambitions for achieving universal health coverage, called NHI. The Bill signals a sharply diminished role for medical schemes, which 8.9 million people use to pre-fund access to private healthcare services.
Given the apartheid-era legacy of inequitable access to health services, opposition to NHI will be cast as being anti-black and anti-poor.
With little scope to raise revenue with further tax hikes without undermining compliance, NHI funding will be a perennial problem.
Anxiety about the rates government will be willing to offer private healthcare providers could trigger an exodus of doctors and nurses.
The NHI Bill rolls back current health rights for migrants, raising the prospects of a future legal challenge.
