Yet this is the underlying assumption of the National Health Insurance Bill, which serves to force the public and private health systems into a hasty marriage.
Poor management of every aspect of public health – finances, human resources, procurement and maintenance – is one of the biggest weaknesses of the sector. More money in the system will not remedy this. It will simply provide incompetent and corrupt managers with bigger budgets to burn.
Parliament summoned provincial health MECs to the House and MPs wanted answers after receiving a report from the Office of Health Standards Compliance that only five of the 696 health facilities it had inspected during 2015/16 had reached the required level. Some of the MECs’ admissions about their provinces were scary. ….more