Johannesburg - The passing of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill has drawn varied reactions from political parties and civil society organisations.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) said that the passing of the bill marked a decisive epoch of an irreversible rupture with the present unequal two-tiered health-care regime.
The party said that the irrational two-tiered health-care regime had persisted hand-in-hand with income and wealth inequalities, which had worsened with every crisis of the exploitative capitalist system.
"The NHI legislation must focus on a major redistribution of health-care resources to benefit all, as opposed to a tiny minority. Such redistribution requires a system-wide structural transformation approach.
"South Africa cannot transform and upgrade its public health-care sector without eliminating the imbalances between the private and public health sectors, which are skewed in favour of the minority-servicing private health sector," said the party.
According to the SACP, NHI legislation had to lay a solid foundation for a thoroughgoing structural transformation of health care provision in favour of the people as a whole.
"The SACP is vehemently opposed to corporate capture of and profit-making from the NHI and its exploitation in any form. We are against corruption and the neoliberal policy of austerity, which has also contributed to delaying the advance of the NHI," added the party.
The DA’s Michele Clarke said their party had always believed in partnering with the private sector for a whole-of-society approach to addressing the issues plaguing society, instead of scapegoating it for governance failures.
She said there were about 9 million people who had medical aids, and once the NHI was implemented, these 9 million people would have to be accommodated in an already overburdened public health system.
"Instead of going directly to their privately paid doctors or hospitals, they will now be competing for treatment in the public health system with its severe staff and resource constraints. The last indicators of the national surgery backlog were more than 168 000," said Clarke.
Peirru Marx of the trade union Solidarity said there was also prevailing concern about the complete collapse of the free market in this sector as a result of the NHI.
"Implementing the NHI will undoubtedly result in a disaster in the medical industry. The government is simply not to be trusted. Their history of abuse of power, mismanagement, and corruption will undoubtedly compromise the quality of medical care," said Marx.
The Star