The ever-increasing cost of private healthcare undermines the country’s transformation agenda, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Friday.
”There is an inadequate level of diversity of ownership and competition within the sector and this does not therefore create a downward pressure on costs,” she told a private healthcare conference in Midrand. ”The sector is largely driven by the profit imperative as many companies in the sector are listed.”
Where products and services are made available ”for the survival and common good of human kind”, it might be inappropriate to have a huge profit motive overriding decisions, she said.
The private hospital industry with its fee for service has been recognised internationally as unsustainable, unaffordable ”and frankly not ethically justifiable”.
In addition, it is not in the best interests of either the private healthcare sector or the patients that it serves.
”[At present], I don’t believe that patients are adequately protected against exploitation by healthcare providers,” the minister said.
The private healthcare sector needs a coherent regulatory framework to ensure that it operates in the best interests of all the citizens of the country, not just its shareholders. Measures need to be adopted both by the government and the private health sector to ensure greater transparency.
”We cannot afford to allow this industry to continue to be negatively affected by the undesirable practices as recently reported in the media as well as the cost spiral that we are currently witnessing,” she said.
It has to be ensured that the private health sector play its role in the creation of a national health system in which all South Africans have access to affordable, quality healthcare.
”Over the past five years, membership of medical schemes has become both static and increasingly unaffordable, thus widening the gap between the high-income and the middle-income groups in terms of access to private healthcare,” she said.
Of concern is the significant increase in expenditure on private hospitals from R8-billion in 1997 to R17,7-billion in 2006/7. This represents a 121% increase in just 10 years. Specialist costs increased from R5-billion in 1997 to R11-billion in 2006/7, an increase of 120%.
”If we do not intervene now, it is quite possible that the private healthcare sector will shrink and perhaps collapse,” the minister said. — Sapa