Pre-NHI clean-up: Motsoaledi enlists private sector

Abstract

Two powerful doctor bodies, the Independent Practitioner Associations’ Foundation (IPAF), and the SA Private Practitioners Foundation (SAPPF), are pitching in to help government clean up the primary health care delivery mess.
Both agree with national health minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, that a complete ‘re-engineering’ of the dysfunctional public health care sector is needed for any variation of National Health Insurance (NHI) to succeed. However, Motsoaledi and his cabinet colleagues also believe that the private sector cannot be left to ‘wayward’ profit-driven market forces and is as much in need of re-engineering.
In his budget speech to parliament on 31 May, the health minister said that under the present system, whether public or private, ‘no national health insurance can ever survive’. He typified the system as ‘unsustainable, destructive, extremely costly and hospi-centric or curative’.