AfriBusiness call to scrap National Health Insurance

AFRIBUSINESS said yesterday it welcomed the Davis Tax Committee’s report that plans to implement National Health Insurance (NHI) in South Africa should be scrapped.

AfriBusiness, the non-profit business rights watchdog, said the NHI couldn’t be implemented while economic growth was left wanting.

Monday’s Davis Tax Committee report focused on financing the NHI. It stressed the need for proper consultation before the health insurance scheme was implemented. It also said uncertainty around how South Africa’s NHI would work was cause for concern.

The committee, chaired by Judge Dennis Davis, was set up in July 2013 to assess South Africa’s tax policy framework and submit recommendations to the finance minister.

Law and policy analyst at Afri- Business, Armand Greyling, said there had been much uncertainty regarding the implementation and financing of the NHI over the past seven years.

Two white papers from the government had indicated that by 2025 it would cost R256 billion in 2010 terms to implement the NHI if SA had a GDP growth of 3.5% a year.

AfriBusiness said from the start that the NHI was a “health hazard spun from toxic ideology, doomed to place an unbearable financial strain on the country”, Greyling said.

“The NHI cannot and will not work. The fiscus cannot even afford attempting it. If it were, it would achieve much worse public healthcare outcomes than currently exist.”

AfriBusiness disagreed that, pending sustainable growth, taxes could be raised to finance the NHI at a later stage – it was doomed to failure regardless of economic growth.