As civil society organisations, political parties, medical aids and other health stakeholders have begun preparations to challenge the signing of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill, the GOOD Party has announced its backing of the contentious bill.
Organisations such as the South African Medical Association’s (SAMA), Solidarity trade union and AfriForum among others have announced their intention to launch class action suits against President Cyril Ramaphosa and Health Minister Dr Joe Phaahla over the signing of the bill on Wednesday.
Patricia de Lille’s GOOD Party, however, has opted to charge against the wind and pledge its support for the bill aimed at transforming South Africa’s healthcare system and ensuring universal coverage for health services.
GOOD Party secretary-general and member of Parliament, Brett Herron, said the reason why the party had decided to support the bill was that South Africa could simply not abandon its constitutional responsibilities to develop a just and fair state on the basis of the government’s track record of incompetence.
“Whether or not the state is presently competent to manage the proposed National Health Insurance system is not the question. The question is: Is it the right thing to do? And, if it’s the right thing to do, how can all of us, that’s the state, medical professionals and citizens, contribute to its competent management?”
Herron said the starting point for these questions lay in South Africa’s history, as 30 years ago, the country’s democracy inherited a multi-tier health system where the middle class, with medical aid, received superior treatment from private health professionals and institutions, while the state ran parallel, racialised and bantustanised health departments for the less well-off.
“If we agree that all people are intrinsically equal, and equally deserving of health care, that system was patently unfair. The democratic state has de-racialised its health offering but does not have the money to offer high-quality services to all who need them. The private health sector, on the other hand, is awash with money,” he explained.
He further added: “In Cape Town, while children die of preventable diseases every year due to the foul conditions in which they live, patients fly in from overseas for elective surgeries because to them our private health sector is accessible and affordable.”
Herron said, if anything, it was regrettable that the NHI Bill was being signed now, days before an election, because parties to the left and right of the present government were bound to merrily distort their arguments for and against the bill, simply to suit their politics of fear, mistrust and loathing.
“On the one hand, they will use the bill as a lever to scare privileged communities into believing that the NHI will deprive them of the high level of medical care they presently enjoy and pay for. On the other hand, they will want people to believe that the NHI is not aggressive enough in redistributing resources from privileged to poor people.
“Run-ups to elections are not conducive environments for rational debate on a topic as fundamentally important as this. The GOOD Party supports the signing of the NHI Bill because it is a tool to address inequality and improve healthcare services for the majority of the people,” he stressed.
The one thing Herron did caution, however, was the need for the incoming government to develop a programme to iron out identified wrinkles in the legislation prior to implementation, with the explicit aim of developing the confidence of health professionals and the health sector.
The Star
goitsemang.matlhabe@inl.co.za