President Mohammadu Buhari, recently signed into law the National Health Insurance Authority Bill, repealing the National Health Insurance Scheme Act.
The new Act now makes health insurance mandatory in Nigeria and establishes a Vulnerable Group Fund.
The Chairman Senate Committee on Health, Senator Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe, says the Act is the answer to out of pocket health expenditure by Nigerians.
He said that the journey to the signing of the NHIA started in 2006 with the Senate and the House of Representatives Committees on Health seeking to achieve UHC by stopping out of pocket expenditures for health services.
The bill had gone through the readings at both chambers and was first to be passed in 2020, but failed to scale through.
The Chairman also said that the signing of the Act was very apt as it would make it mandatory for all Nigerians to access health insurance.
“So, the motivation is your best able to ensure that Nigeria attains Universal Health Coverage. But why do we have to do that? The financing of the health sector now is from two main sources, the public and private sector. By private, we mean individuals. Then, it was about 65% of out of pocket but now its about 70.5% based on the last National Health accounts studies.
“What it means is that out of every N100 that is spent on health, N70 is from individual pockets and that is not possible, not sustainable and not feasible in the long term. The resultant of that is that people die from curable and treatable illnesses because of lack of money,” Oloriegbe said.
Senator Oloriegbe who sponsored the National Health Insurance Bill, stressed that the ACT would put an end to Nigerians suffering for healthcare expenditure.
He however noted that, the WHO was instrumental to the passage of the bill, “Because we have structure in place, the WHO provided support for us to have leadership.”
The chairman noted that the NHIA does not make provision for a telecoms tax as a source of funding in the law contrary to hasty reports in some exuberant national media.
“The signing of the health insurance Act makes it mandatory for all Nigerians to benefit from health insurance. It is now left for states to establish State Health Insurance Schemes for their citizens to benefit from the service.”
Senator Oloriegbe however appealed to state governors who were yet to set up State Insurance agencies to quickly do so for the benefit of their citizens.
He added that in the next one year, the parliament would push for the implementation of the Act.
