NHI Bill signed into law: Rolls-Royce system of healthcare for all?

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NATIONAL NEWS - President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill into law this afternoon, exactly two weeks before South Africa is set to hold the 2024 National and Provincial Elections on 29 May.

The bill, passed by the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces last year, is designed to ensure free healthcare for all South Africans at public and private healthcare facilities.

While the bill is being contested by various political parties and business organisations that have threatened to take legal action, the president says it aims to provide universal health coverage for all South Africans and overcome critical socio-economic imbalances and inequities of the past.

“In signing this bill, we are signalling our determination to advance the constitutional right to access healthcare as articulated in Section 27 of the Constitution. The passage of the bill sets the foundation for ending a parallel inequitable health system where those without means are relegated to poor healthcare,” said Ramaphosa.

“The NHI is an opportunity to make a break with the inequality and inefficiency that has long characterised our approach to the health of the South African people… It is an important instrument to tackle poverty,” he added.

According to Ramaphosa, ‘the rising cost of healthcare makes families poorer’ and, by contrast, ‘healthcare provided through the NHI frees up resources in poor families for other essential needs’.

He said the NHI will ensure society does not have to bear an ‘untenable financial burden when they need medical assistance’.

“The healthcare system is fragmented and wholly unacceptable. The private sector serves people with few resources,” he said, explaining that those trying to return government to a fragmented system are ‘out of line with the global world’.

According to the president, the challenge in implementing the NHI lies not in the lack of funds, but in ‘the misallocation of resources that currently favours the private health sector at the expense of public health needs’.

“The NHI will make healthcare in the country, as a whole, more affordable,” he said, referring to it as a ‘Rolls-Royce system of healthcare’.

He added that it will be implemented in a phased approach.

Legal action threatened

Several organisations and political parties have opposed the bill.

The DA says the bill will be a death sentence for South Africa’s healthcare and further burden taxpayers, and will be challenging ‘this reckless legislation in court to safeguard our nation’s future’.

Dirk Hermann, the CEO of Solidarity, wrote to the president last night, informing him that Solidarity will take legal action within an hour of the signing ceremony.

“If the president signs the NHI Bill, knowing that it contains substantial flaws, he is certainly also responsible for the consequences thereof. This piece of legislation will be detrimental to all South Africans.

“The NHI Bill is populist, irrational and unaffordable. To put the entire country’s health at risk for the sake of votes is extremely reckless,” said Hermann.