The Nigerian health care sector gives our brand so much sleepless nights whenever we are forced to consider in our thoughts, what is possible and the reality we are faced with.
As a committed African brand, which believe that we cannot solve our problems by only complaining or running away from the Nigerian reality, we have decided to continuously engage the system and make well thought out suggestions as to how we can make Nigerian health sector thrive, irrespective of the many landmines on the path to excellence in that sector.
Let us talk about the Nigerian Health Insurance Industry and how the relatively poor leadership at National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) over the years, has caused the Nigerian nation so much between the year 2004 till date.
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NHIA is saddled with the sole responsibility of promoting, regulating and integrating health insurance schemes.
At the time this regulatory body was signed into law, the goal was to achieve universal health coverage by the year 2030.
Just for the sake of context, NHIA became operational in the year 2004. Twenty (20) years later, out of a population of over 250,000,000 people, just a paltry 17,000,000 (which is < 6% of the total population) citizens are covered by the insurance health scheme in Nigeria. This should make anyone reading this, sad.
The million-dollar question to be asked is, why is it that after these number of years, our National Health Insurance Scheme service, is yet to be optimized, in the interest of the Nigerian people?
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What has the various leaders of this regulatory body been able to achieve over these years?
Could it be that the average Nigerian trader in the market, farmer or business minded individual in the informal sector knows absolutely nothing about health insurance?
What if it is, that some of these citizens are aware of health insurance services but when they remember the stress and discriminations they go through, at the point of requesting for service at such accredited facilities, they feel demoralized to even register.
Can’t the process of accessing care be made relatively seamless for these Health insurance patients?
How about the reality of the difficulty some of these accredited facilities go through to get paid their claims for the services rendered?
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State governments like Anambra State and Ebonyi State in the Southeast, Ogun State, Lagos etc. to the very best of our knowledge, seem quite deliberate with what they are doing with their insurance agencies for their citizens.
Anyone reading this article, who follows developments in Nigeria, can attest to the fact that the Nigerian economy is not exactly in the best of shapes at the moment. This reality explains why the course of most services, healthcare services inclusive, have been reviewed upwards.
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When International Trade Commission, published that Nigeria’s insurance coverage, covers less than 6% of the Nigerian population as of 2023, we were stirred and felt like refuting such publications, until raw data was made available to our team of researchers.
Prof. Mohammed Ali Pate, the Minister for Health and Social Welfare is a man with international exposure in the global healthcare space. His, is one of the appointments of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that gave our team a semblance of hope in the Renewed Hope Agenda.
Listening to the Minister of Health and Social Welfare talk about the reforms his team is spearheading at the National Health Insurance Authority, which should see an upscale from the 17,000,000 enrollees to 50,000,000 people in the nearest shortest possible time.
Although the time span given here is not exactly measurable, we are tempted to take a wild bet on the Minister’s pronouncement, hoping that he makes it a reality.
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State governments must engage with the Federal Ministry of Health through the National Health Insurance Authority to compare notes on what they have been able to do excellently over the years and how they can make the health insurance scheme more functional and a bit more profitable even to the private players in the sector while offering excellent service to patients.
As we come to a close on this topic, it is pertinent that we state that accredited facilities where healthcare insurance services are offered, should endeavor to stop forthwith the discriminations against patients who are not paying out of pocket for healthcare services.
The NHIA can even start off an annual event where they partner with various media outlets, to recognize specially, States that enrolled new users the most annually. Healthcare facilities (private and public owned) who offered the best of service to their patients which can be gotten from customer survey should be recognized. The health facilities that attended to the most patients on health care insurance services annually should be rewarded.
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Private and government owned institutions, often complain of the bottle necks they counter at the point of processing their payments. Poor premium paid by State governments or privately operated Health Maintenance Organizations have been listed as parts of the challenges.
Stakeholders in the healthcare sector from the Local Government units down to the State and then to the Federal government must come together to review what is being done in that sector while exploring the options of innovations that can be introduced to make their operations relatively smoother.
Conclusion
Finally, the Nigerian Health Insurance Authority must look out for ways to make the pricing of insurance services more affordable for the citizens, broadly accessible and if possible, subsidize it in some areas for diseases like cancer diagnosis and treatment. This widely held opinion that patients on insurance covers, are often served with substandard pharmaceutical products and products must be addressed. There must be a deliberate policy to engage the media, to drive a massive awareness around insurance services throughout the nation.