Can NHI provide meds for nine million people?

It’s sobering to realise that nine million South Africans are being given a better quality of life through critical medications and treatments provided by private medical aids under the prescribed minimum benefit (PMB) regulations.

Partly it is the realisation that so many of us have health conditions that require regular drugs or treatments… and partly it’s because the scale of those affected underlines the importance of private medical aids in South Africa’s health sector.

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At this stage, the grandiose plans for the National Health Insurance (NHI) have not got around to the minor details of what will happen to those PMBs and who will take over providing that regular treatment and medication for those nine million people.

Craig Comrie, chair of the Health Funders Association, is spot-on when he says that, if the all-encompassing NHI is to provide for this, it will cost a lot of money.

He also points out that current medical aid members – who are essentially middle-class, working people – already contribute substantially to the state medical system through the taxes they pay… yet “make very little use of state services”.

These people, who are currently enjoying a reasonable life through private health care, will be forced to become “dependent on a single-funder state controlled health system under NHI”, he adds.

“The safety and peace of mind of accessing these services in the private sector remains invaluable to a significant portion of South Africans,” says Comrie.

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And, crucially, no-one who belongs to a medical scheme, can ever run out of these PMBs, which medical schemes are bound by law to cover.

Comrie and others emphasise that it is the right of every South Africa to make a choice of health services where cost-effectiveness is not the only criterion.

Freedom of choice is the cornerstone of democracy, not so?