Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is to seek changes to legislation in a bid to contain spiralling private healthcare costs.
She made the announcement at a meeting in Cape Town on Thursday with representatives of the country’s leading private hospital groups. She also held a separate meeting with medical-aid industry representatives.
The minister said her proposed amendment to the National Health Act will seek to ensure transparency in fee negotiations between medical-aid schemes and private health service providers.
It will also aim to remove conflicts ”inherent in price setting”, to contain costs, and to ”ensure accountability for the cost of healthcare”.
An initial draft of the Bill will be discussed by the National Health Council (made up of the minister and her provincial health counterparts) on Friday.
She said the department reached an ”understanding” last year with the private hospital industry that it would limit increases to a minimum in coming years.
”However, as we are aware, the recent tariff increase announcements have not met this understanding and we are yet again back at the table and trying to ensure that costs are contained,” she said.
Some hospital groups had stuck with CPIX, and she thanked them for that. For the rest, however, she did not believe they had provided enough evidence that their proposed increases were warranted.
”It is for these reasons that I am recommending that tariff increases are capped at CPIX,” she said.
CPIX is the consumer price index, excluding interest rates on mortgage bonds. In January this year it stood at 8,8%, while according to the minister, some hospital groups have increased their tariffs by as much as 33% for 2008.
Her department will ”have to see what remedial measures” it is going to put in place to keep increases in line with CPIX.
”I’m angry that we agree on things and they don’t do them,” she said to journalists afterwards. — Sapa