Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi believes the state has a strong case before the courts for advancing its goal to implement a universal healthcare system in South Africa. He has also criticised those pushing against the national health insurance (NHI) scheme in court. Motsoaledi made remarks at the event hosted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in collaboration with the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as the government has been on a campaign to draw support to achieve universal health coverage for all South Africans through NHI.
“The people who have taken us to court are whispering, ‘This minister [Motsoaledi] is mad. Can’t he see that judges are beneficiaries of this system, and he believes they are going to rule in his favour and lose all these benefits? There is no mad judge in the world that is going to do that.’ That is what they are telling us,” Motsoaledi said, addressing the Universal Health Coverage Day event in Pretoria on Friday.
The implementation of NHI has been challenged by a number of organisations including the SA Medical Association (Sama) and the Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF). Motsoaledi said despite the government’s spending billions on private healthcare, the money did not benefit the majority of South Africans. Motsoaledi said some people on medical schemes turned to the public for help because medical schemes found reasons not to cover them.
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“In Gqeberha, there is a priest who has been paying for medical aid for 30 years, and now he has cancer and the treatment is going to be R1.4m. The medical aid is refusing to pay; they are looking for scientific reasons why they must not pay,” the minister said. “They resorted to the congregation.
The last time I checked, the poor congregation had already contributed over R800,000 towards that treatment for a man who, for the past 30 years, has been paying a premium to a medical aid. These types of things cannot be allowed.” He was confident NHI could be implemented and run the way the state handled its HIV/Aids treatment programme. “We treated everyone, whether you were a billionaire or a domestic worker, we treated everyone.”
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