Motsoaledi says willing to discuss differences over NHI impl
Health Minister Aaron Motsoledi said on Thursday that his door remains open to those who are unhappy with the manner in which the NHI is being implemented.
President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the National Health Insurance Bill into law ahead of the elections amid grumblings from opposition parties and the private sector.
While the need for universal health coverage is widely accepted, many feel the NHI, in its present form, is unimplementable.
“No one here is going to stand up and say: ‘I do not support UHC’,” Motsoaledi told MPs during the debate on his department’s budget on Thursday.
“But you are going to stand up and say, ‘I support UHC but not in the form that it is now – not in the form of NHI’. Fair enough, but we cannot throw the baby away with the bathwater.
“Let us discuss which areas need to be ironed out but let us not be obstacles to what poor people have been waiting for for close to a century.”
Motsoaledi said the government cannot stand idly by while the current gross inequality in the health sector persists.
"We can no longer, with our eyes open, sustain such gross inequality. If there is something we can do about it, we must do it now and not in the distant ill-defined future.”
ALSO READ:
