{"id":58675,"date":"2014-10-23T05:30:30","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T05:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=58675"},"modified":"2014-10-22T22:42:18","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T22:42:18","slug":"pay-us-now-or-else-hispag-warns-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=58675","title":{"rendered":"Pay us now or else&#8230; \u2013 HISPAG warns gov&#8217;t"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Health Insurance Service Providers Association of Ghana (HISPAG), is threatening to withdraw its services if the government and the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) fail to pay all arrears owed them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Association has therefore\u00a0issued a two-week ultimatum to that effect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">HISPAG is claiming that the government owes them over GHC 100 million and all efforts to get the money paid have yielded no result.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;N5DFtOfmOsDP2atinDvSC7qb5Ac6jehg&#8221;]Addressing a news conference in Accra, the Executive Director of the Association, Frank Toblo said the two institutions must immediately settle their debt because the situation is crippling their work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">He warned that any form of intimidation from the government will &#8220;not be tolerated&#8230;the best form of intimidation that the providers can tolerate is the total payment of over-due claims.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Mr. Toblo stressed that government&#8217;s refusal to pay the money will consequently lead to unrest in the health sector and the total rejection of NHIS card bearing members.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The issue of non-payment of outstanding claims to HISPAG has been lingering for sometime now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In June 2014, HISPAG served notice to the NHIA that members may be<a href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2014\/06\/30\/hispag-to-turn-away-nhis-card-bearers\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong> forced to withdraw their services<\/strong><\/span><\/a> if the Authority is unable to pay its accrued debt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Association acknowledged that the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was one of the\u00a0best pro-poor social intervention mechanisms rolled out in Ghana but expressed regret about the\u00a0repeated delay in the payment of claims to service providers nationwide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Later in July, the leadership of HISPAG threatened to <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2014\/07\/03\/service-providers-to-sue-nhia\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>drag the NHIA to court<\/strong><\/a><\/span> to enable it retrieve monies owed them since their earlier demands were not addressed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Director of Operations and Communications for HISPAG, Anthony Ameka in an earlier interview with <strong>Citi News<\/strong> complained that his outfit did not receive any payment from the NHIA and as a result, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) were suing HISPAG members for delayed payment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">By: Marian Efe Ansah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Health Insurance Service Providers Association of Ghana (HISPAG), is threatening to withdraw its services if the government and the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) fail to pay all arrears owed them. The Association has therefore\u00a0issued a two-week ultimatum to that effect. HISPAG is claiming that the government owes them over GHC 100 million and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":45570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[15,43,38],"class_list":["post-58675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-chinese","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}