The DA (DA) has written to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana asking for a presentation on the financial feasibility, cost and implications of the proposed NHI Bill, saying that as yet, there is still no funding model for it despite the government stating it would be “tax funded”, and that the Bill doesn’t adequately address corruption or whistleblowers’ protection.
Politics Web reports that during deliberations of the Bill in a recent parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health meeting, the ANC insisted that the NHI would be “tax funded”, and, said Michele Clarke, DA shadow minister of health, “as on previous occasions, the ANC members in the committee simply talked around concerns about an outdated feasibility study that has not considered the economic reality of a post-COVID-19 South African economy, the dwindling tax-base or the rising unemployment numbers”.
National Treasury has repeatedly, she added, been invited to deliver presentations, but the requests “continue to be ignored, as do our concerns regarding certain clauses and subsections within the Bill, which fail to address the prevalence of corruption within the public health sector and the lack of protection for whistle-blowers”.
“Instead, they chose to rubbish News24’s investigative articles surrounding the tragic death of Babita Deokaran and the dodgy dealings of President Cyril Ramaphosa's nephew by marriage, Hangwani Morgan Maumela, with Tembisa Hospital, as gossip, and lamented that the DA chose this to illustrate corruption and the danger to whistle-blowers,” said Clarke.
They “forgot that Maumela’s dealing first came to light as a result of questions submitted by DA Gauteng shadow health MEC Jack Bloom to Gauteng Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko”, she said.
The government appears “determined to bulldoze the NHI Bill through Parliament with no regard to the knock-on effects this will have on an already struggling public health sector, taxpayers, the economy and those who will ultimately suffer under subpar health care – the public.”
PoliticsWeb article – Still no proper funding model for NHI – Michele Clarke (Open access)
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