Government will make public its long-promised proposals for a National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme as soon as they are ready, the Health Department said on Tuesday.
Asked if the department had set a date for release of the document, spokesperson Fidel Radebe told Sapa: ”Not at this stage”.
The department remained committed to releasing the NHI proposals ”as soon as they are ready”, he said, offering no further comment.
Radebe was responding to a Democratic Alliance (DA) call, earlier on Tuesday, for the government to provide more information on the NHI.
”It is now almost two months since the ANC promised to make its discussion document on National Health Insurance public.
”The DA supports the call today by The Lancet, a respected medical journal, for the government to provide more information on its NHI proposals.
”The longer it delays releasing this document, the more it shows its contempt for public debate and the more it risks putting in place a plan that will be disastrous for healthcare,” DA health spokesperson Mike Waters said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Deputy Health Minister Molefi Sefularo told a conference that base documents on the NHI would be released by the end of June, he said. — Sapa