NEW MEDICAL INSURANCE SCHEME: ARE TEACHERS PENNY WISE BUT POUND FOOLISH?

The National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) managers have showered teachers with praises for being “full of magnanimous emotions.” They have praised them for their patriotism and their generous spirit. This was occasioned by the teachers` resounding rejection of a plan to have them join the new medical insurance scheme. Teachers opined that unlike legislators and many other affluent Kenyans who jealously guard their exclusive and expensive private healthcare insurance schemes, they (teachers) are forever bound with millions of Kenya`s holloi polloi. They said that they will continue sharing with them the thinly spread benefits accruing from their (teachers`) contribution to NHIF. What many people do not know is that this “magnanimity” comes at an astronomical cost.

First, despite teachers being faithful contributors to NHIF`s kitty, the latter offers them disastrously low benefits which often spell financial disaster when serious illness or disaster strikes. Because of the poor state of public hospitals especially in the rural areas, teachers and their family members have had to seek medical services from well equipped private hospitals. Here, NHIF can only defray a paltry of the huge accrued medical bills.

Secondly, amid the increased health costs coupled with corruption and structural inefficiencies in the NHIF as well as the declining government support in the health sector, teachers have had to dig deeper into their pockets to meet their health needs. Unfortunately, poor pay has made it practically impossible for many of them to afford medical services such as kidney dialysis, a procedure that is essential for many patients with kidney disease; many still cannot afford cancer treatment. The list goes on ad infinutum.

Thirdly, these prohibitive costs have turned out to be more than teachers can afford except by mortgaging their families` future. Many are the times I have witnessed teachers and their family members turned away in droves from private hospitals or evicted from hospital beds due to their inability to pay for medical services. Many have died because the medical allowances they receive cannot defray the cost of treatment. These are tragedies that teachers have had to bear in Kenya.

One would have that that with the above problems in mind, talks of establishing a better medical insurance scheme exclusively for teachers and civil servants would not touch off an explosion of furious protracted polemics. On the contrary, it seems that this state of affairs will continue ad infinitum.

Teachers appear contended with soaring medical bills in private hospitals. According to teachers it is cost effective to pay less to NHIF but dig deeper into their own pockets for quality treatment. They prefer remaining in NHIF and put up with a health care insurance that is designed more for the convenience of the NHIF Fund managers to marching out in droves to a new medical insurance scheme complete with its explicit entitlements. Thanks to the teachers` understanding and magnanimous nature the NHIF managers have their jobs intact. After all, the “penny wise and pound foolish philosophy” has kept their milk cow alive.