On The National Health Bill

The Board of Healthcare Funders of Southern Africa supports the Minister of Health and the National Department of Health in developing and formulating legislation which provides for the establishment of a Bargaining Chamber, as it will, if executed appropriately, bring about transparency in pricing within the private healthcare environment.

We further hope that the parliamentary process will facilitate, in an objective and robust manner, the fine tuning of this legislation to achieve what is intended, i.e. fair and reasonable prices for relevant health services. The BHF will meaningfully participate in the process as we believe that the implementation will give rise to a downward pressure on the price of private healthcare, which in turn will have a knock-on effect on premiums paid by consumers. If this happens we would be addressing the issue of affordability and accessibility.