PLOT BY MAGNATES TO SMOTHER THE NEW NHIF SCHEME MUST BE DEFEATED.

Probably you have witnessed patients turned away from hospital doors or evicted from hospital beds due to their inability to pay for services. Such patients usually succumb to their illnesses or injuries shortly after such harrowing ordeals. These are deeply human tragedies that are a common occurrence in Kenya.

Not even those in private health insurance schemes have been safe from the avarice of magnates. Prohibitive costs have turned out to be more than they can afford except by mortgaging their family`s future. This is because the country has allowed many insurance companies to create numerous complicated policies that have trapped Kenyans in gaps, limitations, and exclusions in coverage. In most instances these policies offer disastrously low benefits and often spell financial disaster when serious illness or disaster strikes. Attempts by the government at restoring sanity in this vital sector have always touched off an explosion of furious protracted polemics within the private sector. Magnates have resented such attempts as negating the principles of economic liberalism.

In our concern not to infringe on doctors` and hospitals rights as entrepreneurs, we have allowed them to offer health care in ways designed more for their own convenience and profit than for the good of the people of Kenya.

This state of affairs cannot continue ad infinitum. I believe that the time has come for Kenyans from all walks of life to demand that the right to universal health care is not trampled upon any more. The time has come for us to give a wide berth to all those who are hell bent on engaging in bitter polemics on an issue as sensitive as universal health care.

We must not allow magnates to make us lose focus at this critical moment. In their bid to smother this noble idea these magnates have been quick at expressing concerns with the indecent haste with which the new NHIF health insurance scheme is being operationalized. They have pointed out the past inadequacies surrounding NHIF as a basis for not implementing the new health insurance scheme. Such comments are not unexpected. Suffice to say that they are an expression of the desire by magnates to jealously guard their private health insurance companies schemes that are so callous to human suffering, so intent on high profits and so unconcerned for the needs of the holloi polloi.

In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong in enhancing the capacities of NHIF while implementing the new health scheme at the same time. I am sure that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Again it is naïve for anyone to advance the argument that Kenyans were not consulted before the implementation of the new scheme. It is absolutely wrong for one to imagine that the government must knock on every person`s door to capture their views on important policy issues. Unbeknown to such people consultation is a complex and continuous process. Monitoring and evaluation of government programmes is one such channel of consultation.
It is also laughable that those claiming lack of consultation should rush to court without themselves consulting the very constituents they represent as to whether a legal recourse was necessary.

It must be understood that millions of Kenyans increasingly feel that the government should guarantee good health insurance scheme at an affordable cost. It is this overriding desire by Kenyans that has informed the decision by the Ministry of medical services in mid-wifing the new health insurance scheme.

What the Ministry of Medical services is offering is more than what Kenyans bargained for. This new scheme not only empowers but also makes people`s entitlements explicit. Families will pay a small means-tested premium to cover them for health care. The government will in turn pay for every Kenyan thus increasing benefits that can be claimed on the small premium. This is sure to be a boon to millions of poor Kenyans.

TOME FRANCIS,
BUMULA.
http://twitter.com/tomefrancis