Mixed reactions as NHI bill comes into effect on Wednesday

President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced that he will be signing into law the National Health Insurance bill (NHI) on Wednesday, May 15.

The announcement has sparked a variety of responses, with the opposition parties lashing out on Ramaphosa over the NHI bill and expressing their dissatisfaction with the announcement.

In December 2023, ActionSA wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa urging him not to sign the NHI Bill into law.

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has expressed his disappointment at the announcement, saying the president ignored their plea to not sign the NHI Bill into law.

“While the NHI is well-intentioned to address healthcare inequality in South Africa, the proposal is ill-conceived as it will open up healthcare for grand-scale corruption as we have seen during the Covid-19 pandemic when billions were lost through PPE and related corruption,” expressed Mashaba.  

“We must never forget the lives of whistle-blowers such as Babita Deokaran lost addressing this corruption,” added the ActionSA leader.

ActionSA believes that the NHI will not fix South Africa’s broken healthcare system, instead, it will worsen the healthcare crisis and open doors to more corruption.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is also displeased with the signing of the bill and has said that they will challenge it to the constitutional court.

“The DA will upon its signing into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa, challenge the ANC’s NHI to the constitutional court. Our legal team was briefed months ago already and will file our legal challenge against this devastating legislation without delay,” said DA leader John Steenhuisen.

The DA has estimated that the NHI will cost from R200 billion to R1 trillion per year. This means extra tax increasing VAT from 15% to 21.5% and increasing personal income tax by 31%.

Steenhuisen continued to say that “the NHI will empower the Minister of Health to be directly involved in the day-to-day management of the biggest pile of taxpayer’s money that has been accumulated in South Africa. The looting that will take place is easy to imagine yet too ghastly to contemplate”.