They Say We Must Not Implement NHI

NHI Public hearing

What is NHI?

The National Health Insurance is a health financing system that is planned to source funds from public and private sectors. This will ensure that all legal citizens of South Africa are able to access affordable health services. Without discriminating the individuals as in irrespective of their socio economic status. 

Who will fund NHI?

From what I have gathered, I believe government is planning to shoot themselves in the foot like approaching international financiers like World Bank, International Fund and the private sector to kick the process. That will be a disastrous approach so I offer the following suggestions:

Taxes

For starters, the state can in a way ensure that medical aid profits that are usually enjoyed by private companies instead of customers. I propose they create bill that will state all medical aids should be partially taxed to fund NHI partially but that will be not enough. The new tax bill should on all those JSE listed companies that are partially funded by institutions like PIC. So instead of taking away company profits after every financial year, medical aid companies should be forced to increase their community presents. Their community presents should be yardstick to decide how much tax should be paid at the end of their financial year. So, in a nutshell I am suggesting that if medical aids want to pay less tax their community presents should be visible and easy to access. 

Spending instead of Borrowing/ Taxing

Economic theory is is filled with Washington dogma that has led most if not all economist to believe only neoliberal economics exist. Thanks to my reading interest, I have bumped to something called modern monetary theory. The theory teaches us that as long as countries are sovereign, and  are able to issue their own currency, they must be able to spend on programs like NHI without the need to worry about were the funding will come from. The theory also highlights how to manage any type of inflationary pressure that comes with printing money for programs like NHI, free education and things like ensuring public servants do not have to fight government yearly for their yearly increase. If the state was to use its reserve bank intentionally they will avoid unnecessary interest that comes with borrowing in foreign currency.

Obama Care

NHI similarly to Obama care it will certainly help the majority of citizens if it was to be implemented. We can take a look at what are the pros and cons of Obamacare so as to take the goods and avoid the bad. With Obamacare business usually cries of higher taxes to cover the forced employee medical aid care. The rich cried and said they are heavily taxed to fund free riding. However, I believe the benefits for me are way more than the drawbacks. So in a nutshell, I believe ObamaCare was and is still is a good initiative. 

Conclusion

Yes our public sector is poor, the service you get in public healthcare is embarrassing. Our infrastructure should have been way better after 26 years of democracy in the health sector. However, we can improve our health sector by ensuring our health workers are well paid so as to improvetheir service. We can undergo a huge health sector infrastructure program to ensure our population is well taken care of. We definitely can open more universites and FET's to train workers using current technology and embrace our african medicine. All this is possible if we get our neoliberal outlook thrown in the bin an allow our modern monetary advocates to take charge for just five years and then judge for oursleves what can go wrong.