AfriForum today presented its input on the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee for Health. The bill amounts to the nationalisation and monopolisation of the health sector, as well as the elimination of private medical funds. In its presentation, AfriForum provided a number of reasons why this bill would be catastrophic for South Africa. The civil rights organisation argued that the proposed bill, like other state-owned companies, would be susceptible to corruption and maladministration, but also that its implementation would be unaffordable for the taxpayer and would lead to the mass emigration of health workers.

“The government is using NHI as way of garnering votes from poor South Africans, who have legitimate grievances regarding the quality of health care in South Africa. However, NHI will not solve these problems. On the contrary, it will lessen the total access to quality health care by destroying the private health care sector,” Reiner Duvenage, AfriForum’s Campaign Officer for Strategy and Content, said during his presentation.

“NHI is a project for which the true costs and service needs are completely unknown, but despite this, is still being foisted on the already over-burdened taxpayer. By looking at the track record of state-owned monopoly enterprises, NHI will be severely burdened by corruption, excessive bureaucracy, mismanagement and inefficiency,” Duvenage concluded.

AfriForum re-establishes its commitment to fighting against NHI. Please give your support to this crucial matter by visiting AfriForum’s website regarding NHI.