The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has chastised the Minority in Parliament for portraying the scheme in a bad light.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s quite appropriate to paint such a dull picture of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS),\u201d said the Communications Manager of the Authority, Selorm Adonoo.<\/p>\n
This reaction follows an accusation made by the Minority in Parliament claiming that the NHIS\u00a0has virtually collapsed due to the incompetence of the Mahama-led administration.<\/p>\n
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Dormaa East, William Kwasi Sabi in his address to the media further accused the government of starving the scheme with the necessary funds to effectively provide healthcare for its subscribers.<\/p>\n
Mr. Adonoo on Eyewitness News<\/strong> said assessments of the scheme must be put in context for better evaluation and appreciation.<\/p>\n He said to judge the performance of the scheme; one must consider the \u201ckey performance indicators.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll our key performance indicators have been positive, they have been high and they are very encouraging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n According to him, the utilization of healthcare service on the account of the NHIS has significantly increased from 596,000 in 2005 to 27.4 million in 2013.<\/p>\n Regarding the membership of the scheme, it currently stands at 10.1 million.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a scheme which is suffering,\u201d Adonoo maintained but quickly added that focus should be on expanding resources to cater for the increasing number of subscribers.<\/p>\n He mentioned that every health insurance scheme needs a sustainability regime and it is imperative for Ghana to redefine its sustainability regime to meet the growing status of the NHIS.<\/p>\n The NHIA Communications Manager admonished politicians and citizens not to \u201cdiscourage people\u201d by painting a bleak picture of the scheme.<\/p>\n \u201cYou may say a simple thing like the scheme is collapsing but you may not know the repercussions of that simple statement you may have made. It is unnecessary to put things like that out there,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n The NPP indicated that the membership of the scheme dropped drastically from almost 65% coverage of the country\u2019s population in 2008 to less than 35% in 2012.<\/p>\n But Mr. Adonoo clarified that when the scheme began operations, a methodology was used in calculating the number of subscribers but as the scheme grew, the said methodology became obsolete and irrelevant.<\/p>\n The methodology was subsequently changed in 2009 which looks at the number of yearly renewals and the number of new subscribers which gives the active membership.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you don\u2019t have to be carried away by big figures as in 65%,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By: Efua Idan Osam\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana
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