South Africans cannot afford another state-run experiment
We have all encountered a person in our lives who jumps from project to project but whose boundless ambitions never yield any fruit. From a third-person perspective, you can see exactly the same missteps in every single one of their schemes, while they keep on assuring you that “this time it’s going to be different”. The major difference between that familiar scenario and the current predicament South Africans finds themselves in with the National Health Insurance (NHI) on the horizon, is that the former scenario isn’t reliant on your hard-earned income financing all those expensive failures.
An effective challenge for people who compulsively buy new books is to only allow themselves to buy a new one for every three they read. I reckon this principle should be applied to the ANC government as well. From South African Airways to Eskom, the Post Office, the SABC and public education – the ANC government has truly demonstrated a consistent inverted Midas touch when it comes to running state-owned enterprises.
If we are to continue down this big government/big spending paradigm – which I cannot see us abandoning in the near future – the least South Africans can do is to demand of the state to demonstrate a clear ability to look after their toys before they are given any expensive new ones. With the ANC’s dismal track record, I reckon this is a perfectly reasonable demand from taxpayers.
Until the ANC practise what they preach and deliver what they promise, South Africans should refuse to fund any further expensive schemes like the NHI, the only goal of which appears to be further centralisation of more power and control in the hands of the governing elite, and thus furthering the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). President Ramaphosa has recently promised that “We want to run a clean ship in our NHI Fund.” What should seriously concern us is that this would be the very first clean ANC ship in their entire fleet.
If the ANC is unable to demonstrate its ability to run state hospitals effectively it should never be given a mandate to explore further risky healthcare ventures. This could force them to consider alternative paths to reach the same goals they seek to achieve. The single principal contributing factor enabling wider access to private healthcare remains a nation’s level of per capita income. Therefore, the most logical alternative path to increase access to private healthcare across society should be one focused on economic growth, accompanied by a reduced individual tax burden.