The management of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has cleared the air on the controversies surrounding the decision by the Authority to donate GHC250, 000.00 to the Covid-19 National Trust Fund.
Hours after the management of NHIA had announced the donation of its widow’s mite to the fund, some stalwarts of the opposition National Democratic Party (NDC), including a former Chief Executive Officer of the Authority, Sylvester Mensah, greeted the decision with propaganda, which went viral on main stream and social media. They questioned the decision by the NHIA to donate to the fund when it owes service providers millions of cedis as result of non-payment claims for several months.
Social support
But, according to management of the authority, the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), which is being managed by the Authority, is to facilitate the provision of, or access to, health care services and to invest in any other facilitating programme to promote access to health service.
“The donation is the NHIS’s way of demonstrating good corporate citizenship by supporting government initiatives that will provide health education, prevention and enhancement of health infrastructure to fight this unseen enemy,” it stated.
It explained that the said mount does not, in any way, relegate the payment of claims to the background, adding that the GHC 250,000.00 donation to the Covid-19 National Trust Fund represents less than five per cent of the entire corporate social responsibility (CSR) budget of the Authority for 2020.
“It is equivalent to 0.06% of funds paid in claims this year, which amounts to approximately GHC400 Million to healthcare providers as claims re-imbursement,” the NHIA explained.
A release by the corporate affairs directorate of the Authority added that the NHIS was set up as a solidarity system to make public healthcare affordable, saying the public healthcare support includes payments for vaccines, immunization, malaria prevention, among others.
The release also observed that the equivalence of the National Health Service (NHS), as pertains for the UK or PhilHealth for the Philippines, will cover all expenses for Covid-19 related treatments, albeit with additional emergency funding from the government.
