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BL Premium reports that legal challenges to the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act have already started against President Cyril Ramaphosa, after his signing of the bill into law.
In a letter of demand dated Wednesday and sent minutes after the president signed the law, trade union Solidarity’s attorney Carel Nicolaas Venter said “the governing party has disregarded substantive and procedural issues raised by industry stakeholders, citizens, and organisations ... in favour of pushing through impractical and unconstitutional legislation”. Solidarity said the government failed to conduct a proper cost analysis. “Government has not adequately examined the concerns raised,” Venter said. These concerns were, among other things, “governance structures, operational efficiency ... (and) the risk concentration in a single-payer system within an unstable economy plagued by endemic corruption”. The government’s dismissal of these “is shortsighted, unwise and ultimately unconstitutional”, Venter indicated. He added that the NHI regime would infringe on healthcare rights “compelling many who now use private medical care via medical schemes to rely on an inadequate public healthcare system”. Solidarity said it would institute its “challenge (to) the constitutionality of the NHI Act” in court, unless the government confirmed it would repeal the act. The trade union has given the government until next Thursday to reply. AfriForum also delivered a letter of demand to the President on Wednesday, declaring the NHI regime “unconstitutional, unaffordable, unimplementable policy”. The civil rights group said it would be instituting a class action against “the government of SA, the president, parliament and the minister of health”.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
- Read Solidarity’s press statement in the above regard at Politicsweb
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page