What took you so long, minister?
SOME weeks ago I was attacked by Trudi Makhaya of the Competition Commission for saying the commission put a stop to the annual fee-setting negotiations between the medical aids and the Medical Association (of doctors). It was the Competition Tribunal, she said. Naughty boy.
But now I see Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi is quoted in Business Report (July 31) as saying he wants the commission “to reverse its ruling and allow medical schemes to enter into price bargaining negotiations with the service providers”.
Motsoaledi told the Board of Healthcare Funders conference that an official at the World Health Organisation (WHO) wrote to him back in 2010 saying, “minister, you can’t allow this”.
Motsoaledi told the board that pricing in private healthcare was “abnormal and unacceptable”. And he laid the blame for this squarely at the feet of the commission, whose ruling in 2004 prompted health pricing to become the law of the jungle. “Being in hospital now,” he was quoted as saying, “is like being in a supermarket, but at least in a supermarket you are certain of prices. That ruling was a terrible ruling. It brought much uncertainty.”
If he thought all this, why has it taken him two years to tell us and the competition authorities? This ruling, promoted by the commission and acted upon by the tribunal, has been in force for eight disastrous years. Armed with a devastating commentary from the WHO, the minister’s failure to act is inexcusable.
It is another example of what we have come to expect from this government — a crisis of leadership.