The announcement by Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Marfo that the NHIS capitation being piloted in the Ashanti region will be scrapped was made out ignorance, the deputy Ranking Member of the Health Committee of Parliament has stated.
“I don’t think he is well informed,” Dr. Robert Kuganab-Lem said Monday July 17, 2017 on Morning Starr adding, “he is definitely limited in his knowledge of what the plans are.”
The capitation programme was introduced by the erstwhile Mahama administration and aimed at simplifying the processing of claims by service providers.
Under the project, clients select their preferred health facility, which would be responsible for their primary healthcare needs.
It has however been fraught with challenges.
Addressing the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) Ashanti Regional delegates’ congress, Mr. Marfo labeled the programme as a failure noting “We will cancel it. Very soon you [will] hear government on the way forward.”
In his reaction however, Dr. Kuganab-Lem, retorted otherwise arguing that the current system of running the NHIS is not sustainable and that the capitation is the way to go.
According to him, Mr. Marfo’s disclosure was made out of ignorance fueled by petty politicking.
“As you are aware,” said Dr. Kuganab-Lem “the senior Minister is not a Cabinet Minister and issues of these nature; he should refer it to the Minister of Health. He has a penchant of wanting to always incite people, divide Ghanaians on ethnic and regional basis.”
He said contrary to believes that the initiative will cripple the NHIS, capitation will bring about a lot of accountability and responsibility on the part of people who are managing the scheme.
So it [capitation] is a good thing. In most countries; what we are doing now is not done anywhere. It is a moribund idea, it is dead and buried. It is unsustainable,” he noted.
