President Cyril Ramaphosa will sign the National Health Insurance Bill into law tomorrow at the Union Buildings in Pretoria at 2pm.The Bill, according to the Presidency, aims to create a balance and bridge the gap between private and public healthcare.

NHI BILL

In a statement late yesterday, the Presidency said: "The National Health Insurance Bill aims to direct the transformation of the South Africa's health care system to achieve universal coverage for health services and, through this, overcome critical socio-economic imbalances and inequities of the past," read a statement from the presidency. The National Health Insurance Bill (NHI) was approved by Portfolio Committee on Health in May 2023 and it was passed by Parliament on 13 June 2023 and sent to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) for concurrence. NCOP then passed the Bill on 6 December 2023 and submitted it to the President for signature.

 DISAPPOINTED 

Herman Mashaba's ActionSA has expressed disappointment over the announcement of the signing of the NHI Bill stating that the President ignored the plea to avoid signing the bill into law, in order to avoid State Capture 2.0. "While the NHI is well-intentioned to address healthcare inequality in South Africa, however, in its current form, it is opening the health system to corruption as we have seen during the Covid-19 pandemic when billions were lost through PPE and related corruption. The proposal is ill-conceived and will not address the shortcomings of the healthcare system in South Africa but present itself as a third tier in addition to the public and private healthcare. This will open up a loophole to budgetary irregularities that will enable corruption and collapse the healthcare system even further," said ActionSA in a statement. The party added that the government has consistently proven unable to manage money or complex systems. "As we have seen at Eskom, Transnet and SASSA, and the creation of another healthcare behemoth will therefore do little to address healthcare but instead open up the industry to state capture and abuse. It must be noted that the greatest problem in the South African healthcare system is not funding but the money lost through corruption and mismanagement." A copy of the Bill can be accessed here.