‘The latest announcement that the National Health Insurance (NHI) could be funded through the use of funds from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) shows that the government still has no idea how the scheme will be funded, which is untenable.’

So says the Institute of Race Relations’ (IRR’) Marius Roodt in response to Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi’s answer to a parliamentary question revealing that his department and the National Treasury were in talks to access PIC funds to pay for public health infrastructure.

‘The fact that the Health Department is now looking to the assets of the PIC to potentially fund NHI shows that the government still has no idea how it’s going to fund it. It is only through raids like these or through large, unsustainable tax increases that NHI can be funded and neither is a good solution.’

In a statement on the Politicsweb site, Roodt added that if PIC assets are being considered then it would not be surprising if the government started looking at other pension funds to help pay for NHI.

‘The issue of prescribed assets – where pension funds are forced to put money into certain assets – is something that the ANC perennially raises. Do not be surprised if the ANC starts looking to private pensions as a possible funding source for NHI,’ warned Roodt.

‘Some people will say that the ANC would never look to private pension funds to fund a scheme like NHI. But senior Health Department officials have made it clear that they view the savings that South Africans have in private medical aids as something the government should have access to in order to fund NHI,’ Roodt added.

The government must forget about NHI once and for all, Roodt said.

‘Nobody is opposed to ensuring that all South Africans can access good quality healthcare, but NHI will not ensure that. It will destroy that which works and not fix that which is broken,’ Roodt said.

Full statement on the Politicsweb site