Anti-market ideology

Your editorial opinion refers (“It is time to call out the ANC’s hollow promises on NHI ”, December 13).

National Health Insurance (NHI) would mean anyone well-off enough to use private healthcare would see a 60% fall in their level of care — except that it would be far worse, as many doctors would simply leave SA.

The ANC lives in a dream world if it believes young doctors and specialists in particular will remain working here were the ANC to nationalise health.

While in concept the 80% majority would be better off if everyone had an equal level of medical care, the majority would actually lose rather than benefit. Due to the haemorrhage of doctors, the poor would be worse off, even with the heroic assumption that the NHI would be competently and honestly managed.

Were the ANC to seriously move towards its Marxist medical health dream we would all suffer. In any event, the dire state of the poor, homeless and unemployed in SA would not be ameliorated by obsessive zero-sum-game medical interventions. The malaise of the downtrodden is the outcome of decades of unemployment, malnutrition, lack of clean water, sanitation and proper shelter — and of hope.

The remedy for the poor majority lies in rapid economic growth that creates jobs, capital investment and a burgeoning tax base sufficient to fund better hospitals and clinics, and to fund decent unemployment benefits. The ANC should abandon its antimarket ideology and embrace a modern market economy.

Markets have flourished in Africa for millenia. All we need do is extend the age-old African market culture to the modern investmentintensive and technology-based world of today — and tomorrow. Set our entrepreneurial spirit free!

Willem Cronje Cape Town