Politicians must stop Meddling with NHIS – Healthcare Providers demand

… AS THEY WITHDRAW NHIS SERVICES

Executive secretary of the Health Insurance Service Providers Association, Frank Torblu has blamed complications faced in administering the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) on the continuous interference of politicians.

According to Mr Torblu, the interference of political actors with little knowledge on how the system works, causes confusion between certain key stakeholders within the NHIS.

Speaking in an interview on rainbow radio today, he cited an example of the finance minister, Ken Ofori-Atta asserting that “health insurance doesn’t owe providers that much” to be a gross misrepresentation of the the reality on the ground.

He added that, the government owes private healthcare providers under the NHIS, so the minister’s statement has caused tension between them and their suppliers as well as other parties.

He explained that some members of the association are in court over delayed payment to some state institutions who are of the wrong impression that, private healthcare providers have been duly paid. Due to this, some NHIS services will be withdrawn from March, 2020 in protest of outstanding debts owed to them by the government.

“The government owes us. One arm of government owes us and another arm of government is dragging us to court”

He advised politicians to be abreast in key issues concerning the NHIS before publicly running commentary in order to avoid needless tension and confusion.

“Any politician who has something to say about the NHIS should to go the NHIS office to investigate and understand the key issues before publicly commenting. If that doesn’t happen it can create needless tension between some groups of people”

He therefore urged politicians to “get off the neck of health insurance and allow the technocrats of NHIS to work”.

Source: Jonas Danquah || ghananewsonline.com.gh