Fast Facts no 10 - October 2010

Perhaps the starting point of what is wrong with the proposals of the African National Congress (ANC) for a national health insurance system (NHI) is this claim in its recent 48-page discussion document: ‘It is an established fact that the current command of health resources by the private health sector, which serves a minority section of the population, has been to the detriment of the public sector’.

The document admits that South Africa has ‘far higher infant and child mortality rates and far lower life expectancy than other countries with similar levels of economic development’, but it then goes on to blame this mainly on ‘the mismatch of resources in the public and private health sectors’ and ‘massive inequalities in the distribution of income and health and other social services’.