Discussants call for more seriousness in NHIS implementation
The roundtable, which was organised by the Centre for National Affairs (CAN), a policy think tank, with support from Star-Ghana, was aimed at discussing the responsiveness of the NHIS to the health needs of indigents under the scheme.
Under the NHIS, a person is classified as indigent and exempted from the payment of premium if he or she does not have any visible source of income, does not have a fixed place of residence, does not live with a person who is employed and has a fixed place of residence and does not have a consistent source of support from another person.
The NHIS was established under Act 650 of 2003 by the Government of Ghana to provide basic healthcare services for persons resident in the country through mutual and private health insurance schemes. The district mutual, private mutual and private commercial schemes are regulated by the National Health Insurance Council (NHIC).
A former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Elias Sory, in his submission, said the NHIS was a good policy which should not be wasted.
According to him, the present challenge was how to identify people who could be classified as real indigents.
He said if stringent measures were not put in place, the policy would not cover the right people.
He called for the incorporation of more sophisticated computer technologies into the activities of the NHIS to ensure that it delivered effective and efficient health care for the people.
A director at the NHIA, Mr Nathaniel Otoo, said the authority had made specific provision for the payment of the registration fees of indigents onto the scheme.
Giving some statistics, he said in 2005 the scheme registered 23,238 indigents but the number was increased to 342,127 in 2011 and 326,182 in December 2012.
He said the exemption provisions under the law entitled all those people who had been classified as indigents to be catered for free of charge by the NHIS.
Mr Otoo said such people included persons in mental or children’s homes, leprosariums, as well as some other vulnerable people in society.
The acting Director of the Department of Social Welfare, Mr Christopher Babooroh, said the department, through a memorandum of understanding, collected data on pro-poor people who were classified as indigents to benefit under the NHIS.
According to him, the department had specially trained personnel who were able to collate those data for the NHIS.
The President of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr Kwabena Adusei-Opoku, called for more stringent measures on the part of the NHIS in identifying such beneficiaries.
He said although there was the possibility of abuse of the system by people, there was the need for the NHIA to put in place flexible measures that would make accessibility for the poor and vulnerable easy.
A senior policy analyst of the CAN, Mr Rocky Richard Obeng, called on the NHIA to do more, so that its impact would be felt by people classified as indigents.
He advised that the selection of people classified as indigents should be made transparent, so that the system would not be abused or corrupted.
Story by Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
