Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr., has asked that the Ministry of Finance be blamed for the continuous complaints in the public sector over the disbursement of funds to statutory bodies.
The seasoned journalist was speaking to the threat by the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) that all the 183 clinics under its umbrella will on July 2nd, cease to recognize National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) subscribers as means of payment for services rendered to clients who access healthcare in the facilities under them.
The Executive Director of CHAG, Dr Gilbert Buckle, explained that health centers under the association are unable to provide quality health care to NHIS subscribers due to the failure of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to reimburse them early for services rendered.
He said: �We are not able to give them the medicines we prescribe, patients come to us under emergency situations and we have to send relatives out of the hospitals to buy medicines and other inputs�and the key issue is the National Health Insurance.�
These challenges according to him, �does not sit well with us as a Christian organization.�
Ghana�s NHIS is heavily relied upon by people who constitute the exempt group � pregnant women, indigent, children and the aged � who form about 58 % of the entire active subscriber base of the NHIS. This heavy reliance of such fee-free people on the scheme call for additional injection of funds to ensure the NHIS remains financially buoyant.
Currently, the scheme is mainly sustained by a 2�% contribution from the Social Security and National insurance Trust (SSNIT), 2�% NHIL and budgetary allocation. But funds accruing to the scheme from these sources have become inadequate over time and there is the need to increase funding for the NHIS.
Contributing to a panel discussion on Tuesday�s edition of �Kokrokoo�, Kwesi Pratt said he does not understand why the monies given to the Finance Ministry are yet not disbursed.
�The Ministry of Finance must explain why the monies have not been disbursed to the various groups to avoid all these problems. Why are the monies given to them yet we experience these problems? These monies cannot be used for buying cars or any other thing. It is to be distributed to the GetFund and other funds so why are they keeping the money? The unfortunate thing is that when such issues come up, nobody tells us anything�at least some explanations will do. Let�s start a campaign to compel the Ministry of Finance to tell us why these things are happening,� he stated.
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