LETTER: Mind made up on NHI

Stakeholders are right to be dismayed by the government’s insistence on pressing ahead with National Health Insurance (NHI) (“First draft rules for NHI Act condemned by critics”, March 10).

The government clearly can’t run public hospitals or clinics, as they remain underfunded and torn apart by corruption and incompetence. It has no business trying to implement universal health coverage. Even sophisticated economies, with far less corrupt governments, struggle to implement their own universal healthcare systems. Only the most delusional individuals believe NHI can work in SA.

Further, the centralised control the health minister will have over key NHI appointments stinks of authoritarianism. Centralised control means centralised corruption. This clause guarantees state capture of the healthcare sector, and all the money that the government plans to steal from taxpayers to fund such a grandiose project.

The ANC will, of course, continue to ignore feedback from stakeholders. It has made up its mind. The national democratic revolution, the party’s guiding ideology, doesn’t care about reason, expenses or reality. The ideology calls for domination of healthcare and the destruction of private sector healthcare — so it will press ahead.

The ANC doesn’t care how many people get sick and die due to its hubris.

Nicholas Woode-Smith
Via email

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.