Health and Managed care Association of Nigeria (HMCAN) is urging the federal government to make health insurance mandatory in Nigeria.
It is also calling for a regulation that will compel the National Health insurance agency to leave implementation of the health insurance scheme to accredited Health Management Organisations and not get involved in implementation apart from facilitating it.
The organisation says a strategy that will see the promotion of insurance schemes in states and local communities in the rural areas is required to mobilise premium payments.
While the government could subsidise the premium for the very poor, unemployed, the very old and children less than 5 years, it states that the entire health insurance scheme should be left to the Registered Private Health insurance providers (HMOs) to run, in accordance with guidelines of the National Health insurance agency and the state counterparts
This will help reduce out-of-pocket expenses for health care borne by Nigerians and assist the government’s quest to improve healthcare for Nigeria, in the view of the association.
At HMCAN’s annual general meeting /scientific conference in Lagos on December 20, 2016, the organisation said the provision of subsidised health care currently being practiced by Federal, State and Local Governments should be replaced by National Health insurance Scheme for everyone.
Danesi Mustapha College of medicine university of Lagos said health care delivery is a potential economic gold mine capable of increasing Nigeria’s GDP if the country’s dysfunctional healthcare financing is tackled.
“This has made healthcare a non-viable business and created an anomalous behaviour where the public and the private system compete among themselves with massive movement of patients to the public sector, where there is a perception of cheaper cost of healthcare,” Mustapha said.
Mustapha said universal health coverage assumes that all Nigerians would be covered in terms of curative and preventive health care. “The cost of curative care coverage for the Nigerian population of 180 million people using the recommended premium of N1,500.0 per month would cost N216 billion per month or N2, 792 billion or N2.792 trillion per annum.
“Such funds cannot be obtained from health budgets of the Federal government and all the 36 state Governments combined.”
Tunde Ladele, chairman of HMCAN said advocacy is key to achieving change in the present situation.
“We need legislative support to make health insurance mandatory in the states as it is done in well developed countries to enhance rapid coverage and HMCAN is already working with the senate and house of representative members to achieve this.”
Kolawole Owoka, immediate past chairman of HMCAN said the organisation will continue to work with the relevant stakeholders to revisit the commercial and operational model of the National Mobile Health Insurance Plan (NMHIP) to ensure that at least 70 per cent of the premium is devoted to service provision.
Anthonia Obokoh
