The Bono Regional Secretary of People National Convention (PNC), Mr. Abdul Samad Nurudeen, has blamed all the 275 parliamentarians for the imminent collapse of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
The Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang Manu, recently confessed that the Scheme was no longer working, and revealed that he no longer used the service and prefers to pay for his medical treatment.
According to the Minister, the treatment given to NHIS card holders at the various facilities was below par, and complained that patients who were unable to pay were being denied access to medical services.
“I pay when I go to Ridge Hospital. I pay when I go to UGMC. I don’t even present my insurance card,” he said.
Responding to Agyemang Manu’s admission of the failure, the PNC scribe told Sunyani-based Space FM that the Health Minister was equally responsible for the present state of the Scheme.
According to him, over the years, all the Health Ministers continued to make unreasonable payments of huge sums of money to the legislators in the name of monitoring all the NHIA-sponsored projects under the District Health Directorates.
Mr. Nurudeen stressed that instead of the Minister taking the responsibility to make the Scheme functional by paying service providers, and halting all the unnecessary payments to the 275 members of parliament (MPs), the Minister had rather chosen to add salt to injury.
He said the Scheme’s funds had been misappropriated by paying MPs to act as Public Relation Officers (PROs) for the Scheme.
It would be recalled that a few years ago the Herald Newspaper published the payment of a quarterly fee of GH¢8,000 each to the 275 MPs, working up to GH¢8,800,000 each year from the drying coffers of the NHIS into the bank accounts and private pockets of the 275 lawmakers, however, the paper did not mention how long the payment had been in place.
According to the Herald publication, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), through one of its Communications Manager, Selorm Adonoo, confirmed the unreasonable payments, saying this had been going on for some time.
He added that the payments were meant for fuel, traveling allowances, hire of experts and other things to help them (MPs) monitor NHIA-sponsored projects under the District Health Directorates.
