The NHI Bill is ‘not doom and gloom’

While there is uncertainty about the role that private medical providers will play when the National Health Insurance Bill gets implemented, Sipho Kabane, Chief Executive and Registrar of the Council for Medical Schemes, is certain that its schemes will continue to exist and function.

The council is a statutory body which provides regulatory supervision of private health financing through medical schemes. The governance of the council is vested in a board appointed by the Minister of Health, consisting of a non-executive chairman, deputy chairman and 13 members. “This is no new information and it’s something that we should have digesting as early as 2017 and perhaps we need to start looking at how we position ourselves as schemes, administrators or members and even the regulator in terms of how this new role is going to evolve and how we should address ourselves to it.”

Molabi said being sure about the bill should not be a course of concern: “In everything in life, wherever there is going to be change, people do not know what is going to be the ultimate end point. There is uncertainty and people get worried. So it is normal. Russell Rensburg, the director of the Rural Health Advocacy Project said he welcomes the bill, but said it is not without flaws. “I think governance is a significant challenge — and that is an area we can engage heavily and see how we can improve particularly around the minister’s involvement as a regulator, overseer and director.”

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