Legislation: More time to comment on NHI Bill

A seven-week extension to the deadline for written submissions on the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill was confirmed yesterday by the National Assembly’s Health Committee, having been announced on Tuesday in a DA press release. Pam Saxby, for Legalbrief Policy Watch, notes that according to the committee media statement, the new 29 November deadline allows ‘important’ healthcare delivery stakeholders two weeks more than they requested. Public hearings in all nine provinces are scheduled to begin on 25 October in Mpumalanga, followed by the Northern Cape on 1 November. At the time of writing, no dates had been set for the other provinces or for parliamentary hearings in Cape Town.

The decision to extend the deadline for written submissions on the Bill may have been influenced by recommendations in the Competition Commission’s recently released health market inquiry report. According to its executive summary, they were made with the aim of providing a better-functioning environment for a ‘fully implemented’ NHI system. The five-year inquiry found the private healthcare sector to be ‘neither efficient nor competitive’ – to some extent because the Department of Health has not used its ‘existing legislated powers’. Commenting on the report, National Assembly Health Committee chair Sibongiseni Dhlomo noted the need for government interventions to address private healthcare shortcomings.