The dream for qualitative healthcare for Nigerians regardless of economic status, would soon be a reality as the Federal Government is working to provide health insurance for vulnerable Nigerians.
This was disclosed by the General Manager, Lagos Zonal Coordinator National Health Insurance Authority, NHIA, Mr. Olufemi Akingbade at a stakeholders forum for enrollees.
The NHIA General Manager noted that the plan was part of measures to ensure the effective kick-off and delivery of the mandatory new health insurance policy in the country.
The forum for enrollees under the new health insurance policy came barely a month after a similar meeting was held for healthcare providers.
In a remark, Akingbade noted that the new health insurance policy has made it compulsory for everyone to have a health insurance coverage, unlike the old one that was optional.
Akingbade said, in its quest to ensure proper healthcare for Nigerians , the government had initially created what it called “the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund” by channelling at least 1% of the consolidated revenue of the federation to provide healthcare for those without the capacity to pay.
According to the NHIA General Manager, the government is trying to expand the package to generate a vulnerable fund that would cater for over 80 million Nigerians who are financially incapable to pay for healthcare.
“The government has tried a lot because they have created initially what we call the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund. The National Health Act of 2014, says at least 1% of the CRF. Now they want to expand that 1% to be able to take care of more people, which is the 83 million people we talked about. And if they are able to do that, it’s going to be put into the vulnerable group”,he explained.
Akingbade said the new government was aware that the goal of rebuilding the economy, would better be achieved when the citizens are healthy, hence the need to expand qualitative healthcare to all through the mandatory health insurance.
He assured Nigerians that the authority would make sure that enrollees receive the best medical care from their respective Healthcare providers.
To that effect, he called on enrollees to report health facilities that fail to render satisfactory services to them, for necessary sanctions.
Akingbade revealed that last year alone 10 Health Maintainance Organisations, HMOs were deaccredited over poor service delivery and that more would likely go this year.
“If you look at our record, last year alone, we deaccredited 10 HMOs from our list. And I know that even this year, some are still going to go because we’re already at the point of recompiling those that have erred, those that are owing,those that are not behaving well.
“We have given them an opportunity because we have done another review this year. We’ve given some HMOs three months, some six months to be able to correct anomalies that we saw. But if after six months, those anomalies are still there, we don’t have a choice than to deaccredit them.Same thing with providers. We have the right to deaccredit”.
He explained that the essence of the continuous sensitization was to make sure that all stakeholders were informed about the operations of the new health insurance policy.
In a presentation, the Deputy General Manager Ikeja State Coordinator of the authority, Dr. Bethuel-Kasimu Abraham said that it a punishable offense for a health facility to deny enrollees treatment, especially in the event of emergency.
Dr. Abraham stated that such an offense could attract up to one million naira sanction for first offender.
” We are not going to have a situation where, for example, an enrollee comes to a facility and is not attended to.
‘Whoever does this has committed an offense. If that offense is not spelled out in the act, you need a guideline to spell it out. This is what will be done. Now, in that act, what we have is there are other offenses that were spelled out where they are to pay a fine.
“The first offender, one million. I think the second offender, two million. For this particular one, I think it’s also included because there are about seven laws listed in that section”.
Participants were sensitized on the various services available under the compulsory health insurance.
The Assistant General Manager, Head of Programmes, Ikeja State Office of the authority, Mrs. Chika Amahalu spoke on group, individual, family and social health insurance programmes for Nigerians, saying the main objective was to extend coverage to everyone and eliminate out-of-pocket payment at the point of care.
There was also a presentation on the “rights of enrollees” under the new National Health Insurance policy.
According to the facilitator, enrollees have the rights to qualitative healthcare, referrals to a secondary healthcare, change healthcare provider and make formal complaints when services offered to them are unsatisfactory.
The theme of the forum was ,” Governing Mandatory Health Insurance: Focusing on the enrollees”.
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