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Pretoria - Deputy Health Minister Molefi Sefularo said on Wednesday that the majority of the country's health funding should flow through the national health insurance (NHI) to ensure more equal access to health care.
"It is within this context that the present dominant role of medical schemes in health care funding needs to be reviewed," he said in a speech at the Board of Health Care Funders conference in Sun City.
"The current concentration of health care resources in one sector that benefits the few is not what we envisage," he said.
He said the proposed NHI model calls for key adjustments in the national health system in relation to four equally important areas, namely revenue collection, the pooling of funds, the purchasing of services and the provision of these services to the general public.
"The intention is that the national health insurance will be funded from two sources of revenue, namely general tax revenue and an earmarked mandatory contribution."
All employed individuals would have to make a mandatory contribution into a national health insurance fund which would be publicly administered and managed.
Unsustainable
He said they were looking at ways to ensure this would lead to the provision of quality health care.
"Innovative mechanisms are being considered with regards to the processes of quality assurance and quality improvement systems to ensure that these two core elements become inculcated as routine processes that will help ensure sustained quality improvement and assurance in both the public and private health facilities."
He said the private sector has the essential role of sharing their experiences with government on their achievements and difficulties in the management and administration of private health insurance schemes.
Sefularo said there was consensus from the presentations at the conference that the current inequitable, two-tier health care system was unsustainable.
"This means we acknowledge that problems besetting health care require interventions both at the public and private sectors."
- Sapa