Health Insurance schemes owe GH¢38m (Back Page)

SOME of the 145 District Mutual Health Insurance Schemes (DMHISs) nationwide face imminent collapse if GH¢38 million they owe service providers under the Ghana Health Service (GHS) is not paid by the end of this month.
At a meeting in Kumasi at the beginning of January, the service providers threatened to demand payment from insured persons before they would be taken care of and demanded the payment of all outstanding debts by the end of this month.
When he was contacted to comment on the issue, the Director General of the GHS, Dr Elias Sory, confirmed the decision taken by the facilities and said instead of paying their debts, some of the schemes rather used the money meant for operating the schemes to invest in other ventures.
He pointed out that there was no way the facilities could continue to care for the insured persons without getting back what had already been spent.
Dr Sory observed that the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) being a new programme was facing some challenges. As a way out, he said he had suggested that Parliament should have a second look at a portion of the National Health Insurance Act of 2003, Act (650), which gives the individual DMHISs the power of autonomy.
Dr Sory noted that as the law stood now, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) could not stop such acts by the schemes, since they (the schemes) were autonomous and could take any decisions they deemed fit.
He observed that is was also expensive to run the schemes on individual basis and said many of the district schemes did not have the capacity to operate efficiently.
In a reaction, the Media Relations Manager of NHIA, Mr Kwasi Acquah, said even though the authority was aware that the schemes were owing some facilities, it had not as yet received all the figures involved.