While there are many medical practitioners who go beyond the call of duty, there is no denying that the Northern Cape health sector is in dire need of rescuing. But it does not require the ANC’s unworkable, unaffordable National Health Insurance (NHI) to deliver quality health care to everyone, regardless of their economic status.
NHI is not going to solve the reckless mismanagement of resources currently allocated to the Northern Cape Department of Health, which lies at the root of critical health care challenges. The Auditor-General confirms that, as of March 2023, it took the department 131 days to collect patient fees and an average of 146 days to pay its own bills. It should take no longer than 90 days to collect debts and no more than 30 days to pay bills. Outstanding bills included payments owed to suppliers of vital medicines, with the Dr Arthur Letele Medical Logistics Centre only able to pay one out of every five suppliers in full on a monthly basis.
Populist rhetoric and electioneering won’t cure the ailments caused by financial mismanagement and misconduct. It won’t cure the entrenched corruption evidenced by criminal cases against senior managers. It won’t fix the rapidly growing surgery backlog that, at last known date, exceeded 8 000 surgeries. It won’t appoint the number of nurses and other medical professionals required to get all health facilities working at optimal level or restore water and power to facilities operating without.
The DA at national level has committed to pursuing all possible legal avenues to set this unconstitutional bill aside. At provincial level, when elected to Northern Cape government, we will bring our demonstrated expertise in running a world-class public health system in the Western Cape to all South Africans.
The DA will root out corruption and cadre deployment, improve service delivery, and protect existing zero-fee care at public facilities, just like we are already doing in the Western Cape.
The DA will also partner with the private sector to leverage the expertise of our country’s world-class doctors and nurses to fix the public health sector that the ANC has broken. We will increase access to affordable, quality private healthcare by introducing a social reinsurance system that will lower the costs of medical aid while enhancing benefits and enabling cross-subsidisation to fund insurance for poor citizens.
Rescuing the health care sector requires that voters must support the DA on election day.