LETTER: SA has no hope of getting NHI to work

Therese Raphael exposed the UK’s ongoing healthcare crisis and failing state of the National Health Service (NHS) in her recent article (“Millions of Brits queue for medical care amid huge backlogs”, August 15). As South Africans, we have a lot to learn from this crisis.

The UK is a far more advanced economy than SA with an experienced and mature bureaucracy and one of the most prestigious universal healthcare systems in the world. Yet it is failing dismally. It is facing budget problems, skills shortages, admin crises and more. And these problems have very human costs.

The wait times for health care in the UK are potentially fatal, preventing many patients from receiving life-saving treatments in time. Ironically, the saving grace of the NHS has been the private sector, which has been picking up the slack and providing much-needed skills to the failing system.

What should be clear to South Africans is that any attempts to implement the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) in this country will fail. And people will suffer as a result. If the UK can’t get the NHS to work properly, despite being one of the most advanced nations and prosperous economies in the world, how is SA expected to get NHI to work?

This government can’t even keep the lights on or crime under control. Giving it power over health care will doom the sector and worsen the health crisis. Rather, we should be embracing increased involvement by the private sector in health care. Deregulate, streamline and enable the industry to grow and prosper.

And most of all, give up on this idea that the state can provide universal health care in SA. All it can do is break it.

Nicholas Woode-Smith, Cape Town

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