South African pharma trade group says NHI cost plan beyond health system resources

While South Africa's Ministerial Advisory Committee on National Health Insurance (NHI) continues to meet, there is still no government document on the NHI proposals available in the public domain and public comment on the NHI proposals has not yet been called for, says the pharmaceutical trade group Innovative Medicines South Africa (IMSA).

When the legislation was presented last fall, it was said that the public will have very little time to comment on the proposed NHI scheme, yet the government wants to enact laws to introduce the NHI by April this year, according to Deputy Health Minister Molefi Sefularo at the time.

The IMSA notes that ECONEX has released the seventh in its series of NHI briefing notes, titled 'Estimating the Financial Cost of the NHI Plan'. ECONEX says 'In this note we calculate the overall cost of implementing a plan with the essential features of the current NHI proposal. It is shown that the resources required for such a plan exceed the available human and physical capacity of our current health system and will put enormous strain on the fiscus.'