The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was a pale shadow of itself during the previous administration, Dr Yaw Annor, Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), has said.
According to him, the scheme was riddled with severe corruption and inefficient use of its resources.
Speaking on GHOne’s State of Affairs on Wednesday May 17, Dr Annor said: “We all knew the scheme had collapsed and that was the reason why the President brought me on.
“If you go by how a health insurance scheme must run, that is having reserves of about three to six months and being capable of looking after its members, one will say that the scheme is more or less bankrupt because the reserves are not there. And as you are all aware, we owe service providers and our contractors almost to the tune of GHS1.2billion. This really shouldn’t have arisen.
“Ghanaians have had their own perception about how the scheme had run, people have had concerns about corruption, people have had concerns about inefficient use of their funds and these are areas that we are looking at very seriously.”
He further indicated: “We need to cut out corruption, cut out fraud…get government again to widen the basket [to raise revenue to sustain the scheme].”
Source: classfmonline.com
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When the Kufuor administration introduced the scheme to parliament, the Ndc as a party said the scheme could not be implemented in Ghana. They as a party, refused to be part of the decision to implement the NHIS. The scheme passed the scrutiny of parliament and it ran relatively well under the super brains that had given birth to it. In the heat of the 2008 campaign, Ndc promised it will introduce one time premium payment for the NHIS when it is voted to power. They won the elections but did not attempt in anyway to raise the matter in public. They, the Ndc know too well, their proposal was a way to deceive. Both their presidents during their 2009-2016 reign, President Atta Mills and President John Mahama supervised NHIS and successfully turned it into a virtual Ponzi scheme. Statutory payment that managed to be paid into the coffers of the scheme, were spent on physical projects laden with corruption. New entry into the scheme was given out for free to people who were not made to pay for least allowable fees. The scheme was used as a trap for votes. Men and women of our neighboring countries were lured to register in exchange for votes. In all these, service providers and the services that matter were simply ignored. Corruption and collusion featured prominently by both high and low officials of the scheme. The may be the picture of the things that occurred under the Ndc administration. With these happenings, one will be tempted to ask, if the scheme is in a healthy state to fulfil the dreams of the founders. Back to the drawing board, the new managers must go.
NPP YOU ARE TALKING TOO MUCH...YOU HAVE SAID THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN..NOW FIX IT..YOUVE KNOWN THIS LONG BEFORE WE VOTED OR YOU SO FIX IT NOW..WE NEED ACTION...