LETTER: Why replace health system that works well with one destined to fail?

Tamar Kahn reports that the government is pressing ahead with implementing National Health Insurance (NHI) despite the fiscal constraints (“State will press ahead with NHI regardless of state of economy, Phaahla says,” November 17). This is yet another example of this government completely ignoring reality.

That reality is that there is simply no money to fund universal health coverage in SA. There is barely enough money to run current public hospitals at a minimal standard — and that is with private healthcare picking up the slack. How can government expect to implement universal, free healthcare when it can’t even get the basics right?

Even if there was enough money for NHI (which there isn’t, by a long shot), it would still be a bad idea. Universal healthcare, even in advanced countries, causes backlogs of patients, intense rationing of medical care and untold inefficiencies. And this is in countries with decades of practice, huge economies and many more skilled administrators and doctors than SA.

The evidence against NHI is staggering. Doctors hate it, economists hate it, people hate it. Yet our government presses on. The drive behind NHI has no real pragmatic motive behind it. It is just blind ideology. Because, at the end of the day, nationalising healthcare is simply about controlling who can get it.

Private healthcare democratises health. It allows anyone to make a financial choice to choose medical care at a quality they can afford. And don’t misunderstand SA’s private healthcare. We aren’t the US. Our private healthcare is not unaffordable. For every person who opts out of public healthcare a slot opens for someone else to receive treatment.

The ideal healthcare system in this country would be to enable the private sector to provide cheaper healthcare options through deregulation and ending the artificial shortage of doctors by enabling anyone who qualifies to study.

The solution is not removing the healthcare facilities that work well, and replacing them with a bloated, unaffordable system that simply will not work.

Nicholas Woode-Smith, Cape Town

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