Government Rushes to Pass NHI

September 15 - The South African public will have little time to comment on the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) legislation, it was learnt recently.

The government published a program of action on its official website stating that details of the scheme would be published in November, after which time the public will only have until April to influence the laws that the government wants to enact.

The ANC led government is determined to get the drafts out by April and have legislation completed by July 2010, thus fast tracking the scheme at a quicker pace than previously believed possible.

On the one hand, the government has asked private health insurance funds to help establish one of South Africa's most ambitious projects to date by contributing expertise and experience in its set up.

Yet, on the other hand, the government is leaving little time for these funds to study the proposals and determine how they can realistically be applied to one of the most difficult and struggling sectors in the country.

The National Health Insurance scheme will have far reaching consequences on the private health sector, as well as on the government, which intends spending billions of rand in its implementation.

One would think that such an important plan would require a more realistic timeline, a plan that would truly bring together the biggest brains in the health industry so that a human think tank could be created to devise a plan that will simply work in the long run.

By March, however, the government aims to already implement a quality improvement plan in 18 health districts, finalize plans to address the staff shortages in the health sector and develop a plan that would give lower ranked medical staff, such as nurses, the right to prescribe certain medications.

The March list, which goes on, seems hugely ambitious at best, and downright impossible at worst. It remains to be seen whether the government can really pull off its plans for the NHI and stick to what many observers consider an unrealistic timeline.