SACP expresses support for NHI Bill, reiterates its call for South Africa to advance towards NHI to ensure access to quality healthcare for all and equality in healthcare
16 February 2022
In its presentation to the Parliamentary Health Portfolio Committee on Tuesday, 15 February 2022, the South African Communist Party (SACP) reiterated its call for South Africa to advance towards a National Health Insurance (NHI) to ensure access to quality healthcare for all and equality in healthcare. The SACP stressed that the NHI was an imperative and expressed its support for the NHI Bill with proposals for its improvement.
The NHI Bill marks a decisive break with the unequal and irrational “two-tiered” health system, a system that reflects the persisting and worsening income and wealth inequality in our society. The NHI seeks to ensure not only access to quality healthcare for all but also the redistribution of existing healthcare resources to build equality in healthcare.
There is vast evidence showing that the commodification of healthcare cannot guarantee healthcare for all. By placing people before profit, the NHI underlines the necessity to decommodify healthcare. In societies where healthcare is sold like any other commodity to facilitate private wealth accumulation, only a tiny minority, largely the capitalist class and the well-off, enjoys the right to life in terms of healthcare security, while the majority, chiefly the working-class and poor, comprises among others the majority of those who die of preventable and curable diseases.
Our hard-won right to life is entrenched in our constitution. The healthcare system must reflect this value and support the fundamental right to life. Anchored in universal healthcare and social solidarity, with a caring distribution of healthcare resources, as well as a disease prevention vision, properly articulated the NHI has a great role to play in ensuring that everyone has access to quality healthcare on the same terms, regardless of whether they have or do not have money to pay.