The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) bill has been referred back to cabinet by the Solicitor General in view of changes introduced into the document without being endorsed by cabinet. The NHIS Task Force is in the process of preparing a cabinet paper, which will be submitted once ready. The Ministry of Health (MoH) expects to obtain cabinet approval before the end of April, but this is not certain with the new government set to come on board in May 2011. The cabinet earlier endorsed the Social Health Insurance (SHI) principles, but not the National Health Insurance (NHI) principles reflected in the revised bill. It is worth noting that the MoH may use the opportunity to engage cabinet to explain the value of the new changes and to build consensus around the main features of the scheme. This should help move forward discussions which seem to have stalled at the technical level.
Status of analytical and preparatory work. The exercise on economic analysis has been delayed considerably and without the findings the MoH cannot engage the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFPED). This matters because while there have been discussions with the private sector, there have been only limited consultations with the MoFPED. The time has come for the MoH to engage the MoFPED and the “powers that be” on the scheme and to do this it needs to know the cost implications of the proposed actions. Considering the limited capacity in the MoH to take the process forward, the P4H network has been asked to explore the possible provision of a long term technical assistance (TA) of 2 years.
