LETTER: NHI law ignores the facts

The National Health Insurance (NHI) Act must fail at the Constitutional Court on the basis of irrationality, if nothing else (“Business laments government’s lack of interest in NHI talks”, September 5). The president tells us policy will be fact-led, but in this case it ignores facts and cannot achieve its intended objectives, the very definition of irrationality.

The ANC purports to emulate China, so if the subject came up while the president was there last week, perhaps President Xi Jinping let him in on an open secret he could pass on to his health minister: private hospitals outnumber public ones in China and are growing.

According to The Lancet, from 2012 to 2021 the number of private hospitals increased by 193.4%, employed private hospital personnel increased by 150.4% and private hospital beds increased by 378.2%.

At last week’s International Pharmaceutical Federation Congress, the health minister exposed his limited knowledge by citing the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK as an example of a working NHI, apparently unaware that private health is growing in the UK mainly because the NHS is in its death throes.

Despite being operated by experienced people and money being poured down its funding hole, waiting lists for standard procedures grow every week and people live in pain, wait days for an ambulance and lie on trolleys in corridors hoping to see a doctor after a heart attack, to say nothing of simply getting an appointment with a GP. 

Is it any wonder that people are deserting the once holy cow and insuring and paying for private treatment, to the extent that a recent survey revealed 44% of people in their 20s and 30s would go private if necessary in the next 12 months, with most citing the need to be seen quickly as their main reason for paying for private care.

Of those who have used private healthcare in the past, 42% did not even consider using the NHS first, as Britain’s healthcare system struggles to meet demand. How is it conceivable that the SA president, health minister and his director-general are either unaware of these developments or ignore the experiences of both pragmatic, developing China and the UK’s NHS?

Sydney Kaye
Via email

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