So the NHI Bill is being signed into law tomorrow by the president. This is the final step in the lawmaking process. Once the president signs it in, this law will be official. This new legislation is very extensive and quite complicated, involves a lot of different kind of moving parts. So it’s not necessarily going to be implemented straight away from tomorrow, but it will be the law from tomorrow.
So if we’re getting a new law, let’s talk a little bit about what exactly this NHI Bill is. I am considering doing a longer video with a more in depth and detailed explanation on this in the future. So leave me comments if you do have any further questions, but this is gonna be a brief summary.
Essentially, this image eyeball is a response to the fact that healthcare and access to healthcare in South Africa is very unequal. It is also based on the constitutional provision and everyone should have access to health gate in this country. So that’s the problem that NHI Bill is an attempted solution to this problem and how another energy Bill attempts to solve this problem is by moving away from a multi payer system of healthcare towards a single payer system of healthcare. And essentially the NHI will be like a universal medical aid for all people in South Africa. So instead of you needing to pay a doctor when you need healthcare, when you need medical services, you will instead be a member of this NHR fund. And the fund will pay the hospitals directly. They will enter all the doctors directly, they will enter into arrangements and agreements for the rates that they will pay to doctors and health, hospitals and healthcare providers, and you will not have make the payment as an individual. The fund, the NHI fund will make that payment.
Now, the first question that many people are gonna hear this as well, where is the money for this going to come from? And that is a valid question. But the NHL does try to shade some light on this and say where they’re going to get the funds for this. So firstly, they mention kind of like redistribution of current funding and current government income to be able to fund this NHI fund. But they also do mention that there will be a personal income tax contribution as well as an employer tax contribution to fund this scheme.
The second question that a lot of people have when they hear about this is, well, what about my private medical aid? Why would I have to contribute to something if I’ve got a private medical aid? And the answer to that is that the MHI is aiming to completely, almost completely replace private medical aids. Once implemented, medical aid schemes will no longer be able to offer coverage for services, healthcare services that are covered by the NHI. Now you can still choose to be a member of a medical aid, private medical aid scheme. But as the implementation of the Bill expands, medical aid will be able to, will be allowed to cover less and less. And eventually, the NHI aims to get to the point where medical aids are only providing like top up coverage that is for things like maybe cosmetic procedures or like more superfluous things that the NHI is not intending to cover themselves.
Now again, this won’t happen immediately. The implementation process will happen gradually and there’s a lot of states in the process that do need to be figured out that in hi is going to have to go through a contracting process in which it makes agreements with all of the various hospitals and healthcare service providers and establishes the prices that they’re going to be able to pay for various things. So it’s going to take a while for this to be fully implemented on how you’ll be able to stay on your medical aid as is. But again, eventually, the goal is to completely replace that or almost completely. The reason behind this is that in theory, it should make expenditure on healthcare in South Africa as like a whole less while providing more service to more people, ensuring more equitable access to healthcare and ensuring that there is not a discrepancy in the quality of treatment people able to receive based on differences in their income or their wealth.
So that’s the NHI Bill, very briefly, is summarized. I know a lot of people have a lot of thoughts on this, so I’d love to hear your opinions on the NHI Bill and whether you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea in the comments, I do also know that a lot of people might agree that the Bill is a good idea in theory, but be worried about how it exactly is going to be implemented under the current administration of current government. So let me know if you have any of those sorts of concerns as well. I’d love to hear people’s different opinions on this one.