The Cabinet Secretariat returned the commented cabinet paper for the Single National Health Insurance (SNHI) Bill to the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children (MOHCDGEC) this August with the request for some changes.
The Cabinet’s feedback is, for the Ministry to now draft two cabinet papers, one for the SNHI bill and one separate for the proposed Health Financing Strategy (HFS) reforms (instead of annexing the HFS to the SNHI bill request). No major contents changes to the HFS or in relation to the SNHI bill seem to have been requested.
The Ministry is currently attending to the requests of the Cabinet and will soon re-submit the two papers. This is delaying the process, making it highly unlikely for the SNHI bill to be submitted for parliamentary discussion this September 2016. The next parliamentary sitting thereafter is currently set to take place in February 2017.
