The Akufo-Addo Administration is targeting the next 18 months to clear the debts that have saddled the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
President Nana Akufo-Addo noted that, his government has found it necessary to find the money to save the scheme from collapse.
“The scheme has been threatened by mismanagement and by huge indebtedness. We are now having to liquidate systematically the arrears so that the service providers can be encouraged to provide services for NHIS card holders.”
“I am hoping that within 18 months, all the arrears of the NHIS would have been settled so that we can have a secure future for the scheme,” the President said.
In May 2017, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Dr. Samuel Annor, disclosed that the Scheme was broke and unable to pay service providers.
The Scheme is said to owe service providers to the tune of GHc1.2 billion, and the Chamber of Pharmacy Ghana and the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), had threatened to boycott services to the scheme over the debt.
President Akufo-Addo was speaking on Tuesday, June 6, when he addressed the Ghanaian community in Belgium, as part of his visit to that country, ahead of the conduct of the meetings of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals Advocates Group of Eminent Personalities.
He also touched on his administration’s vision for education, and the potential of the Free Senior High School policy scheduled to start in September 2017.
President Akufo-Addo underscored the importance of education and skills training to empowering and providing opportunities to the youth to help drive Ghana’s development.
“So as from September this year, anybody entering the public Senior High School system is going to get their education free. The burden is being taken on by the State. We are doing so because we believe that having access to education, empowering our human capital, is our biggest challenge,” he said.
The President continued, “If we are able to do that, within the shortest possible time, and expose our young people to education, especially to new digital technology, it becomes the fastest way to bridge the gap and pull ourselves out from the poverty in which we are in today.”
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
