Private health insurance firms hit as NHIF takes public servants

DETRICIA PAMBA

GOVERNMENT move to bind public servants to use the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) has impacted on the private insurance firms’ customer base.

According to the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) Act, employers and employees in the public sector are obliged to register themselves and contribute to the Fund a total of six per cent of each employee’s monthly basic salary which is equally shared between the employer and employee.

Resolution Insurance Marketing Officer, Ms Laura Lyabandi said in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the government move has decreased the number of customers especially those from the public sector.

“The impact of the decrease in insurance customers has not occurred in our company alone but also in other private insurance companies because all of workers in the government sector have moved to the national health insurance” she said.

More than 75 per cent of the population will have access to insurance services by the year 2020 through the implementations of the universal coverage and accessibility of healthcare services.

Similarly, the government established Community Health Funds (CHFs) with the support of the World Bank under their health and nutritional activities.

CHFs are a voluntary community-based financing scheme in which households pay contributions to finance part of their basic health care services to compliment the government health financing efforts.

She added that what was needed to be done now was to cope with the situation and provide high quality services so as to capture and expand customer base from private sector.

She mentioned having few hospitals with equipment for treating cancer patients as one of the targets in ensuring that good quality services to these people are provided.

Mr Laura said equipment such as Chemotherapy and radiotherapy which are essential in testing and monitoring trends of the patients are only available at the Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI).

She called on the need to attract investors emerge to invest on a special hospital for fighting against the killer disease especially now that cancer patients keep on increasing at an alarming speed.

She said there is a time that her company is forced to take patients abroad for further treatments and last year they sent two patients and this year alone 13 patients have already been taken abroad for further treatments.