Victory for doctors: High Court strikes down NHI Act sections

It is not surprising that doctors and other medical professionals are delighted by the ruling of the High Court in Pretoria that legislation allowing the government to determine where they can practise is unconstitutional.

The court ruled that a number of the sections of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act were, therefore, invalid.

These sections would have required medical professionals to acquire a “certificate of need”, which would, effectively, have given the national department of health the power to dictate where the medics could practise.

Medical expert Dr Angelique Coetzee said “this judgment is also a blow to the total NHI idea”, because the Act had as a core pillar the principle of central management.

The latest judgment will now be sent to the Constitutional Court for ratification which, if that follows, will give the government two years to amend the offending unconstitutional legislation.

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While few would argue with the need for a medical system which offers top class care for all South Africans, the NHI has been touted by the ANC as the magic potion for curing what ails our state medical sector.

In doing so, the government has been trying to cleverly point the finger at the so-called “elite” groups in society, who access private medical care, as somehow being selfish and squandering national medical resources.

This has allowed the ANC to escape blame for the fact that the state medical system is not only dysfunctional, it has also been looted over and over again by the party’s cadres.

Sort out that incompetence and corruption and there will, instantly, be money available to properly fund our hospitals and clinics and ensure that society’s poor and vulnerable will have the same chance at good health outcomes as those who are better off.

That’s not a difficult concept to grasp.

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