TUC, Civil Servants kick against Insurance Bill

Accra, July 16, GNA - The Civil Servants Association, Trades Union Congress (TUC) and other groups have kicked against certain provisions of the National Health Insurance Bill currently before Parliament and called for a review of some portions.

They have also questioned the lack of consultation and haste with which the Bill was laid before Parliament in its present state, which they said was flawed.

The Bill seeks to provide a policy and regulatory framework for health care financing to replace the 'cash and carry system', which involves paying for services at the point of delivery.

Speaking at a day's stakeholders' workshop on the Bill in Accra, Mr Wilson Tei, an Official of the Ghana Insurers Association, said the administration of the National Health Insurance Scheme should be the duty of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and not the Health Ministry, as captured in the Bill.

"The implementing agency being the Ministry of Health is a fundamental flaw in the delivery of health insurance as it is a financial service. The implementing agency should be the Ministry of Finance," he said. The Bill makes provision for the establishment of the National Health Insurance Council (NHIC) to license, regulate and supervise the operations of all health insurance schemes in the country.

"The NHIC should be under the MOF and not the MOH as is being proposed by the draft Bill," Mr Tei noted.

The workshop was organised by the Legal Resources Centre, a non-governmental organisation and PHRplus, an insurance organisation at present engaged in establishing mutual insurance organisation in the country.

Mr Tei said the Bill proposes two and half per cent deductions from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) in addition to levies or taxes.

This source of funding, he noted, would further place a burden on the formal sector in the face of inequalities in taxation between the formal and informal sector.

"The SSNIT funds belong to only about one million Ghanaians, who invariably already enjoy employer sponsored health delivery. Over the long-term the reductions of SSNIT contributions will compromise the solvency of SSNIT," he stressed.

Mr Tei said the Bill, as it stood now, did not seek "to promote private health insurance business and seeks to kill already existing health insurance schemes".

Mr Smart Chigabatia, Executive Secretary of the Civil Servants Association, said the Association has already started its own health insurance scheme, which the government had to build on. He said it would be wrong to evolve a new scheme without reference to the existing ones.

Mr Chigabatia said the government was not the only employer and did not also own workers' contributions to SSNIT and, therefore, had no right to take any monies from SSNIT for the insurance scheme. He also questioned the tax regime being proposed by the Bill as a source of funding. He said the government should be a regulator of the insurance scheme and not a businessman. He questioned why the government had hastily sent the Bill to Parliament without giving any chance for the majority of people to see copies including Parliamentarians, who had their copies on Tuesday.

Mr Kwasi Adu-Amankwa, the TUC Secretary-General, also deplored the haste with which the Bill was sent to Parliament and the lack of consultation.