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The Liberated Metalworkers Union of South Africa (LIMUSA) has noted and welcomes the release of the National Health Insurance Bill for public comment.

LIMUSA welcomes this long awaited victory of workers. This bill comes after a long waged battle by the working class against private capital. It is the consistency of the workers and the campaigning capacity of the left organizations within the alliance, in particular the SACP and COSATU and its affiliates, that has resulted in the NHI reaching parliament and becoming a reality.

The NHI will guarantee a full range of healthcare services to all, regardless of their economic capacity or their position in society and is intended to make some private-sector facilities available to people currently denied access to private hospitals because they do not have medical aids or the economic capacity. It is in this view that LIMUSA considers the National health Insurance as equally a tool of social cohesion. The NHI is also a tool to address the racial separations which persists due to the economic inequality that continues to exist as a legacy of the apartheid system.

At the base of the NHI is equal access to health care, regardless of anyone’s socio-economic conditions. Health care services are considered to be a human right across the world, therefore there is no logic in separating the health care system, especially along economic standards that there should be a health care system for the rich and a separate health care system for the poor.

The current health care system itself reflect the operations of the old apartheid regime. It is an open secret that most South Africans, which are black people, remains poor and at the bottom of the food chain. On the other hand, a large portion of the economy rests in the hands of the minority, which unfortunately are white people.

HIV/AIDS rates remain very high. Also, Mortality and morbidity rates remains at a rate that is unacceptable. It is even more saddening, disheartening and unacceptable that it is workers and the poor who are mostly affected. More concerning is that the rich mostly suffer from sicknesses or diseases that are associated with lifestyles.

It is equally concerning to us that the public health care system which services 85% of the total population only accounts for 40% of the equipment in the health sector while the private sector afforded by a few accounts for 60% of the total equipment.

We are angered by the recent posture of private capital in attacking the National Health Insurance. We view this attack as an attack on the working class and the poor, and if tested too far, we shall respond with the force needed to rescue the working-class struggle. The arrogance of monopoly capital shall never be left unattended to and as LIMUSA we shall never be apologetic in defending the working class.

We are not surprised but irritated by the posture taken by the neo-liberal and reactionary DA against the NHI. We maintain that there is nothing which will benefit the working class that can ever come out of the spokesperson of capital, which is the DA.

The argument that there are workers with medical aids which benefit from the current health care system is not only illogical but equally pathetic. Medical aids remain a burden to workers with medical aids. However, capital thinks that its reasoning is sufficient to even be the reason of workers. We therefore will not allow capital to practice hegemony over workers in terms of logic.

We praise the NHI in that it is based on the need rather than one’s ability to pay. This is the posture that our health care system should have taken a long time ago.

Issued by LIMUSA