Acting President Paul Mashatile has brushed aside big business’s concerns over the explicit support of the National Health Insurance (NHI) by the second Presidential Health Compact that was signed yesterday, saying that the country needed a compact that was responsive to the challenges facing its health system.
This comes as Business Unity South Africa (Busa) yesterday reiterated its stance by not signing the second version of the Presidential Health Compact, citing that it had been unilaterally amended by the government, transforming its original intent and objectives into an explicit pledge of support for the NHI Act.
Mashatile urged all the government’s partners to keep up the good work, continue to demonstrate progress and deepen collaboration to overcome challenges.
“Our nation’s health is too critical, too essential to development, to be weakened by mismanagement, funding crises and other problems. We expect all stakeholders to bring solutions and work with the departments of health and science as well as innovation to implement them,” Mashatile said.
“Effective policy implementation means we can take the right actions and follow through with the plans, leading to successful outcomes. I have full confidence that implementation is the priority of all of us gathered here today.”
The Health Compact has the support of a number of healthcare workers unions, such as the South African Medical Association Trade Union (Samatu) and the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa), who represent more than 90 000 doctors and nurses in South Africa.
“The compact promotes a framework of co-operation essential in addressing the multifaceted challenges faced by our national health system,” the unions said earlier this week.
“As proud signatories of this compact, Samatu and Denosa are committed to the compact’s key objectives, enhancing health systems, bolstering the NHI preparation, and ensuring sustainable, high-quality health care for all South Africans.”
However, the South African Health Professionals Collaboration (SAHPC) – a national group of nine medical, dental and allied healthcare practitioners’ associations representing more than 25 000 dedicated private and public-sector healthcare workers – has refused to sign the Health Compact, saying it was nothing more than an attempt to lock in support for the NHI Act.
The second Health Compact follows the 2023 Presidential Health Summit which built on the inaugural summit of 2018 and brought together the government, business, labour, civil society, health professionals, unions, service users, statutory councils, academia, and researchers to develop sustainable and inclusive solutions to challenges in the national health system.
Busa said the goals of the Presidential Health Compact since its inception in 2018 were based on the need for the public and private healthcare sectors to work collaboratively to improve the overall health system, focusing on urgent projects related to health infrastructure, human resource planning, management capacity building, medico-legal risk management, and health IT system interoperability, amongst others.
Busa added that it has always supported a collaborative, workable NHI rather than the current single-fund model which is both unaffordable and unimplementable.
The businesses organisation said it remained committed to supporting the projects and actions identified under the original version of the Health Compact, and to building a strengthened and integrated health system that worked for all South Africans.
“It’s disappointing that the initiative has been altered to endorse an NHI framework that many stakeholders, including ourselves, do not support because it is unworkable,” it said.
“We have consistently expressed this position at Health Summit discussions, and in our submissions on the NHI White Paper and the NHI Bill, offering constructive recommendations and proposals to achieve the policy objectives without risking the country’s finances or negatively impacting taxpayers. These have all been ignored.”
Theuns du Buisson, economic researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI), said Solidarity believed that the compact’s goal was to raise support for the NHI, and this was done precisely because no one apart from the government actually still believed that the NHI was workable.
“It is very clear that this compact would be just another opportunity for the government to try to create the impression that the private sector supports the NHI, when this is not the case at all. We encourage other groups not to sign this compact, as is the case with Busa,” Du Buisson said.
“For the Presidency we say he should much rather send the NHI back to Parliament. Repeal the NHI and start working on a new law compiled with the assistance of real, transparent consultations with interest groups.”
BUSINESS REPORT