By Adedapo Adesanya
The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has disclosed that it is working towards amending the Act that will establish the fund that will transform it to a health insurance commission.
According to the body, the amendment bill, which is before the National Assembly, recently passed the second reading and when finally passed, will make health insurance mandatory to all Nigerians in both formal and informal sectors across all tiers of government.
According to the Executive Secretary of the NHIS, Mr Mohammed Sambo, speaking at a retreated organised by the body in Nasarawa State, the amendment will make it possible to strengthen and expand the scope of the agency so that there can be a much-desired national health coverage.
The move by the NHIS came just as one of the key stakeholders, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), said that there are indications that the operations of the health insurance scheme is becoming more transparent and accountable.
The NLC president, Mr Ayuba Wabba, at the retreat alongside his counterpart from the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Mr Bobboi Kaigama, said that being transparent is one of the best ways to engender confidence and trust of the public that would in turn increase the subscriber base.
Speaking on the amendment of the NHIS Act, Mr Sambo said that the present law permits NHIS to register federal civil servants and a few private sector individuals who voluntarily subscribe to the scheme.
According to him, only 3.5 million Nigerian workers were presently covered by the health insurance scheme and this situation had restricted the NHIS because it could only reach a few section of over 200 million Nigerians.
“Under the mandatory insurance scheme everybody will join and then you have the money coming from the public sector, from the private sector and you have contributions coming from persons that are rich. With that kind of funding, you can now begin the journey towards achieving universal health coverage.
“So the law is to be amended to reflect that which will even convert the NHIS to a commission and when that commission is established and its mandate based on compulsory health insurance then everybody will then subscribe,” he said.
Mr Sambo also said that with the expansion of the scheme, it would attract a large pool of fund, which will in turn lead to cross-subsidization.
“The rich will subsidise the poor, and there is a tendency you will have a surplus fund with which you will use to give and create subsidy for those who cannot pay,” he said.
He called for a move towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC), adding that information about health insurance scheme is very poor.
Also speaking on the effort to create the commission, the Executive Secretary of the Osun Health Insurance Agency and the Chairman of Forum of Chief Executives Officers of State Insurance coordinator of the state’s health insurance scheme, M. Niyi Odunyi said that having a health insurance under one roof became necessary due to the various fragmentation, lack of coordination and operational disunity in the health insurance industry.
He said that NHIS, state health insurance, private health care providers and others were all doing different things and there is no coordination, adding that, there is no mechanism to provide accurate data of the number of people covered by health insurance in the country because there is no interoperability.
“Want to come up with a framework that will bring everybody under one roof in terms of coordination of Health insurance activities in the country, exchange of data, having seamless ICT structure at both national and state insurance agencies,” he said.
Aduragbemi Omiyale