LETTER: NHI is just not practical
Based on health-care costs and capacity in England, SA’s scheme will be too expensive
25 February 2020 - 16:01
We are again asked by the president to get behind National Health Insurance (NHI). Yet the much complained about National Health Service (NHS) of England, which has much the same population as SA (about 56-million), cost about £134bn this year. That is about R2.68-trillion.
The NHS has about 1.2-million staff but does not cover such things as eye tests, dentistry and scripts. People can still go private (mostly for surgery due to the long waiting times on NHS), and this costs a total of about £12bn extra (about R240bn)...
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