READER LETTER | NHI will collapse the health sector

Same as other stated-owned enterprises (SOEs), the health sector will go the same route. How can an incompetent government think they can take over the whole health sector into their own hands?

Although they purport it not to be, they can’t cope with the influx in clinics and public hospitals. They want to offload it now to the private health sector in the guise of making easier health access. These people can’t solve the health crisis, hence the involvement of the private sector hoping that this will be their rescue.

All these patients going to private doctors are going to inconvenience the medical aid patients, who are paying more. Meanwhile the NHI or government patients will pay less – paid for by the government. The government will have its own list of payment rates, same as medical aids, but then theirs will be less. They will be forced by government law to abide or forfeit their licences to practice.

Their NHI is like a medical aid which will involve the private institutions like an extension of the public sector. This is a way of imagining the health sector as having improved halving queues at clinics and hospitals. Throwing the burden over to the private sector and giving them the burden of endless invoicing and long queues, which the government will take long to pay, some will end up not being paid. Some practices and hospitals will end up bankrupt and close down.

This NHI is a death knell to the private health sector. They have been thrown into the incompetence of the public health sector. The private health sector have a right to stand alone. They don’t want government interference in their business. They don’t even want to partner with the government. Now they want to enforce the partnership. They have a right to be a standalone.

Concerned citizen, Soweto