Minister of Health and Wellness, the Hon. Dr. Michael Darville has revealed that the government intends to overhaul the National Health Insurance (NHI) legislation.
Dr. Darville told reporters, “the new bill that I’m gonna lay we will open the door or the next steps because from the initial stages of NHI that was conceived in 2016, a lot of things have been changed, and this new bill is absolutely necessary. We could not amend the old bill we had to repeal and replace it.”
The first phase of the NHI program was primary health care. According to Dr. Darville the next phase is catastrophic coverage and the provision of medication for patients with chronic non-communicable diseases. He said, “in the new bill we will be able to do more diagnostic services. We will add additional services for breast screening, colon rectal screening, we will be able now to do more prostate screening all in the attempt to pick diseases up in the early stages and for NHI to have the means and the wherewithal to be able to allow individuals registered with NHI to access crucial medicines to keep these patients out of hospital.”
The health and wellness minister also spoke about the government’s efforts to address staff shortages. “As we are on a crusade to improve infrastructural programs in the country and development in health care we must never leave behind manpower resources and we are definitely in the process of filling those gaps,” Darville said.
