Stakeholders of the National Health insurance Scheme (NHIS) have released a damning verdict on the scheme saying it risks collapse by January 2015 if additional funding is not sourced by government.
The participants in a communiqué also described as unsustainable the scheme’s current financing arrangement and called for a significant budgetary allocation for the 2015 fiscal year.
[contextly_sidebar id=”DFJLpZDbU8hn8rmiM5HDYhqE7SyhKfdg”]They also want government to consider assigning at least 25% of the Communications Service Tax to the NHIA.
The stakeholder’s request follows an earlier accusation by the Minority in Parliament that the NHIS has virtually collapsed under the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration.
They said the government is starving the scheme of the necessary funds to effectively provide healthcare for its subscribers.
But government has rejected the claims.
Acting Director of Corporate Affairs at the authority Dr. Nii Anang Adjetey told Citi News these recommendations are to help revamp the scheme which is currently in dire need of money.
The Christian Health Association Ghana (CHAG) also in July 2014 turned away NHIS card bearers from their facilities because the scheme owed them about 50 million cedis.
The Ghana Chamber of Pharmacy also threatened to stop supplying drugs to health insurance service providers because of indebtedness.
Dr. Adjetey insisted that “the consistent refrain on this matter has been that the NHIS needs more money. The scheme has expanded and there was the need for additional income and we’ve made this appeal time and time again so at the stakeholder’s conference it became obvious that the scheme needed more money.
“It’s more than ten years now, the obvious thing is that somehow additional funding must be found for the National Health Insurance scheme,” he added.
The stakeholders also called for the benefit package for subscribers to be reviewed to ensure the sustainability of the scheme.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has urged government to halt attempts to roll out the capitation mode of paying NHIS claims in the country because the system being piloted in the Ashanti Region has failed.
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana