NHIF Accused Of Sponsoring The Rich At The Expense Of The Poor

The parliamentary committee of health put the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) on the spot when the insurer’s acting CEO Nicodemus Odongo appeared before them on Wednesday, October 23rd.

Members of the National Assembly committee claimed that NHIF, which is supposed to cater for Kenyans healthcare equally is milking billions from Kenyans, which end up benefiting the rich.

The poor and the elderly, on the other hand, are left with no access to health care services, endless fundraisers to cater to their huge bills and some ailing as they wait for their fate.

It was revealed that most elderly people have NHIF cards, but the problem is that they have never been loaded, rendering the cards mere useless papers that cannot help them.

“NHIF is clearly using poor Kenyans money to fly the rich to hospitals outside the country for specialized treatment,” said Ugenya MP David Ochieng.

Kesses MP Dr. Mishra said that most private hospitals collude with the state health insurer to rob poor Kenyans of their money by charging exaggerated amounts for minor treatments and surgeries which they declare major to unknowing patients.

NHIF CEO had appeared before the National Assembly committee to show them the amount of money spent on private hospitals as compared to government and mission hospitals.

The insurer’s CEO tabled before the committee documents that revealed that private hospitals, which are mostly attended by the well-off Kenyans, pocket billions of shillings in the name of hospital bill payments.

Government and mission hospitals are later left with less than half of the amount private hospitals get every year.
According to the documents tabled at the parliamentary committee that was chared by Murang’a MP Sabina Chege, 37.7 billion shillings was released to be spent on health services for the financial year 2018/2019, from which private hospitals received 22 billion shillings, public hospitals got seven billion shillings and mission hospitals received eight billion shillings.

He also said that NHIF had spent more than 17 billion on specialized treatment, including flying patients out of the country.

While he admitted that there could be leakages at NHIF, Mr. Odongo promised to improve the situation by making a pre-authorization to see that approvals of funds are made after details of the kind of medical service sought by patients is known.

The committee demanded that the CEO provides a list of the beneficiaries of NHIF who have been sponsored for treatment abroad, and the criteria used to select patients who were flown abroad.

“You need to provide this committee with a list of patients who have gone out for treatment for scrutiny, and also give us a breakdown of the amounts claimed by private hospitals,” said the Chair, Sabina Chege.