The Feasability of the Proposed National Health Insurance in South Africa

2001 Words5 Pages

The Feasibility of the propose Nation Health Insurance in South Africa
The Nation Health Insurance (NHI) is an insurance scheme that was released on Friday, 12 August 2011, in South Africa, which aims at introducing an innovative system of healthcare financing that, will only lead to the benefit of South African health outcomes. The NHI’s main aim is not to build more hospitals around the country, but to improve the access to them. The policy wants to ‘ensure that everyone has access to appropriate, efficient and quality health services’ - (Department: Health Repulic of South Africa, 2011), nationwide. The NHI is said to be implemented, slowly, over the next 14 years (currently, the next 11 years) and will improve service delivery in the public healthcare system in the country.
The government is currently funding the public health sector, with 8.5% (with 4.1% allocated to the private sector and 4.2% on the public healthcare sector) of the GDP going towards healthcare in South Africa. It therefore ranks 47 out of 188 countries in terms of health, which is fairly worthy, in a financial sense, compared to a small country like Qatar, with an amount of 1.9% of the annual GPD being spent on health - (The World Bank, 2014). However, the expenditure is relatively low when compared to the amount of 17.9% that the United States spends on the health of their country. Furthermore, the life expectancy of the average citizen in the United States is 78.64 years, Qatar 78.25 years and 52.64 years in South Africa. Thus it can be concluded, from the above results, that although Qatar is spending 1.9% of their GDP on health, their health system is being efficiently used and is working in advantage of their citizens; they are being resourceful when ...

... middle of paper ...

...are sectors. From, both, the institutional and financial perspectives, we can note the NHI policy is detached from the realities of the health systems in the country. If the NHI is implemented, along with inflation, the healthcare costs will increase dramatically. This could, in turn, affect our economy negatively. It, however, does have advantages – improving the healthcare status in the country, which could essentially lead to a healthier population and workforce. Nevertheless, the negatives of the NHI are more prominent than the positives. With a limited amount of resources, only a certain amount of health can in actual fact be provided.
We can all agree on the fact that the current health system needs to drastically change. ‘The NHI Green Paper seems to be a move in the right directions, but many essential features are not addressed properly’ - (Econex, 2011).

Open Document