The Ministry and Department of Health welcome the passing of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill by the National Assembly today. It has been a painstaking work in the past five years since the adoption of the White Paper on NHI 2017. A huge amount of work has been done in this regard to ensure that we arrive at this moment of reckoning in South Africa, that since the dawn of democracy the health sector is to undergo fundamental reform aiming at building an equitable, accessible, affordable, and strengthened healthcare system.
Government considers the passing of the NHI Bill by the National Assembly as a key milestone to ensure all the people of South Africa have access to the same clinic or hospital (either public or private), closer to where they live or work without paying – government will pay. The NHI will usher major reforms in the health sector with an object to build an equitable, accessible, affordable, and strengthened healthcare system in the country.
Government recognizes the efforts by all stakeholders which exercised their constitutional rights and participated in this legislative process to influence decision-making process on the NHI Bill. We were never oblivious and ignorant that there will be different opinions, views, and perspectives on how health reform must be undertaken in the country, and we would continue to urge all the interested parties and stakeholders to continue engagements as the Bill will have to go through the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) for concurrence.
We are convinced that the NHI is the vehicle suitable to drive our health reform programme and is capable of delivering the desired result to ensure those who are deprived of an improved quality healthcare have access too. The NHI is a fund from which the government will buy healthcare services for South Africans from healthcare providers both in the public and private sector. It is a fund to pay for healthcare, and all of us will contribute to this fund through taxes and specials contributions in line with what we can afford. It will ensure that everyone is entitled to free healthcare when they need it, and there will be no fees charged at the facility because the fund will cover the costs of care.
The NHI will enter into contracts with private and public health facilities (hospitals), as well as private health practitioners to provide services. It will strengthen the hand of healthcare consumer and keep the cost of delivering healthcare reasonable while ensuring that healthcare providers receive a fair rate for their services. Each one will be able to choose any NHI-contracted provider in your neighborhood for regular health needs at the expense of government.
We have, accordingly, noted concerns raised by different stakeholders in the consultation and submission process, which we deem important to make these reform successful. We believe that some of them are process issues that will assume shape as we progress to implement the provisions of the Bill after the conclusion of the Parliamentary process. Government has earmarked budgets to revitalize the healthcare facilities, to upscale training to ensure availability of human resources and the building of digital information systems called Health Patient Registration System (HPRS) to integrate all points of healthcare and sharing of patients’ information. The system has been installed in over 3000 public health facilities across the country.
The Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS) as an example was largely piloted during the COVID-19 and was able to bridge the gap between private and public sector healthcare system, it made it possible that patients’ information like vaccination records were shared across the sector.
The implementation of the NHI will be gradual and into phases as we articulated in the past. This provides us with opportunity to continue to have conversation to narrow the gaps that exist amongst different stakeholders. It is important state that we must not allow ourselves to go back to where we are now.
The Department will always remain available and accessible to clarify any ambiguities, concerns and forge partnerships with everyone to achieve the objectives of equitable and strengthened system that is able to deliver Universal Health Coverage.