AfriBusiness welcomes findings on NHI by tax commission

AfriBusiness has welcomed the Davis Tax Committee’s report that the plan to implement the National Health Insurance (NHI) should be scrapped whilst economic growth in the country is left wanting. Over the past seven years there has been much uncertainty regarding the implementation and financing of the NHI, with two white papers indicating that by 2025 it would cost the country R256 billion in 2010 terms, if the country had a GDP growth equal to 3,5% per annum.

AfriBusiness has said from the beginning that the NHI is a health hazard spun from toxic ideology, doomed to place an unbearable financial strain on the country. AfriBusiness however disagrees with the committee when it suggests that, pending sustainable growth in the economy, certain taxes could be raised and implemented to finance the NHI at a later stage. AfriBusiness maintains that the NHI is doomed to failure regardless of economic growth.

“The NHI cannot and will not work. The South African fiscus is in no position to even afford attempting it, and if it were to be attempted, the project would achieve much worse public healthcare outcomes than that which currently exist,” says Armand Greyling, Law and Policy Analyst at AfriBusiness.

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