SACP supports the National Health Insurance, condemns health care profiteers  

18 June 2018

The South African Communist Party has noted the pursuit of an orchestrated campaign against the introduction of the National Health Insurance (NHI). The SACP is combat ready and will take the capitalist profiteers – who benefit from the status quo – and their agents head-on until the NHI is successfully implemented. The SACP is therefore encouraging the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi to release the NHI Bill for and in the interests of the workers and poor, the majority of our nation.     

The NHI must equalise access to quality health care for all, regardless of whether one is employed or unemployed, and regardless of one’s class location and income category. At the heart of the campaign against the NHI are private financial interests and fronted elitist groupings. Private monopoly interests walk all the way to the banks smiling while the majority of South Africans, especially the workers and poor, face exclusions by private hospitals and medical aid schemes.

Those workers who have a medical aid cover find themselves stranded around midyear onwards as medical aid schemes increasingly structure “benefits” to curtail or even exclude day-to-day medical care needs. Private hospitals are charging astronomical fees and medical aid administrators and brokers continue to benefit financially while the workers and poor suffer.

Our country is spending 8.5 per cent of its gross domestic product on health care. However, the greater portion of the money – that is 4.4 per cent – is spent on only 16 per cent of our population. Only 4.1 per cent is spent on 84 per cent of the over 56 million population. This inhuman, cruel and unjust if not also barbaric and is obviously unacceptable. The NHI must bring an end to this class inequality in health care.

Health care is a human right rather than a commodity. South Africa is host to the world’s unequal access to quality health care. This is what private monopolies that have captured the lion’s share of health care funds are seeking to entrench. Theirs is primarily profit making rather than health care.

Issued by Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, National Spokesperson, 18 June 2018