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The Minister of Health Dr Joe Phaahla’s remarks yesterday simply proves that the ANC government is unwilling or unable to face the fact that the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill is not only widely rejected, it is also unaffordable and will decimate the public and private health sectors.

As for his so-called support for the NHI Bill, the truth is that the South African public, health and economic experts, doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, opposition parties and civic society organisations staunchly opposed the Bill, and continues to do so.

Minister Phaahla’s “Ubuntu” and social solidarity is nothing more than cheap electioneering, when the ANC government is eating while their neighbour (the South African public) is literally going hungry.

His promises are cheap and cruel when mothers are forced to have their babies on hospital floors, when surgeons are forced to perform surgeries by cell phone flashlights, when hospitals and clinics are unsafe, when patients are refused health care, when vulnerable and sick patients do not have access to life-saving medicine and the backlogs for surgeries are staggering. Minister Phaahla’s promises mean nothing to the registrars who wasted two years training as specialists while their Master of Medicine (MMed) specialist degrees were unaccredited or the 991 unplaced applicants of the Internship and Community Service Programme (ICSP).

Under the NHI, the only South Africans that will thrive will be politically connected tenderpreneurs and deployed cadres. Taxpayers will be bled dry, while the corruption and mismanagement will continue to flourish.

Issued by Michele Clarke MP - DA Shadow Minister of Health