Election Promises: Democratic Alliance

Heres what the Democratic Alliance says about health issues.

The DA says the governments National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme should be dropped in favour of the partys health plan . The DAs model has the same goal as the NHI to give all South Africans access to the same set of health services for free but will achieve this differently. The NHI Fund will be like a massive, state-funded medical aid and will make it illegal for private medical schemes to fund the same health services as the NHI. The DAs Universal Healthcare Coverage model, on the other hand, will allow medical aids to exist in their current form, but introduce a state-run gap cover (called social reinsurance) , which will pay for costs medical schemes dont, and to which all medical schemes will have to subscribe. The DA will also get medical aids to do something called risk equalisation , which means schemes will have to transfer funds among the different plans they offer in order to cover all members health costs. Universal health coverage is a 2030 sustainable development goal . The DAs NHI model referred to in its manifesto is different from their previous model, the Sizani Universal Access to Healthcare Plan , and is drawn from their new health policy, which will be launched after the election. We have updated our research and interacted with industry experts to develop a credible alternative to the National Health Insurance. There is no public link to it because it is in the drafting phase, says DA spokesperson Math Cuthbert. While Sizani introduced healthcare vouchers to achieve universal healthcare coverage, the new model builds on the findings and recommendations of the Health Market Inquiry and attempts to build on existing capacity in the public healthcare system while addressing market failures in the private healthcare system, says Cuthbert.

As part of its universal access to healthcare policy, the DA government will put a system of post-retirement protection in place for pensioners, which will use cross-subsidies to lower pensioners medical aid premiums, so that they can afford to belong to their chosen medical schemes lifelong. There will also be cross-subsidies for lower-income groups, but instead of directly giving the subsidies to individuals, these would be given indirectly to the medical insurance plans they are a part of.

The DA says its government will implement its plan for universal access to healthcare over five years of being elected into power. The party doesnt provide a budget for the plan in its manifesto, but in its health policy document it says: The problem with public health in South Africa is not primarily a matter of money, but with health outcomes and mismanagement.

The DA will create a national health workers plan to flag skill shortages and get universities, colleges and provincial health departments to work together to prevent mismatches in supply and demand that could result in unemployed graduates in the field of health. The party will amend the National Health Professions Bill to allow medical students to choose between doing their two-year internships and one-year of community service at government or private hospitals (currently all these have to be performed at government health facilities ). The DA doesnt provide a timeline for this in its manifesto.

The DA says it will speed up bureaucratic administrative processes, which delay the fixing and upkeep of health facilities, by giving hospitals and clinics the budgets and authority to pay for upkeep directly, and also to manage the process. Currently, the public works department funds and manages upkeep at public health facilities. The DA will get the countrys clinics and hospitals, both private and public, to provide quality services by allowing the Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC) to assess government and private facilities (so far, only public facilities have been evaluated ). The results, they say, will be made public (the OHSCs evaluations are currently also made public ) and facilities that are not up to scratch will be fined. A DA government will make more safe drinking water available by treating more wastewater for reuse, the party says. It will also improve the quality of treated water by using effect-based methods to ensure that chemicals used to clean water interact with each other in a way that makes the water safe. A specific timeline or budget for this isnt given in the partys manifesto.

DA will make renewable energy (eg, wind and solar power) easier to be used, so that its government will be less reliant on Eskom. To do this, the party will invest in setting up local factories for making solar panels and other equipment used to produce power from renewable energy and it will reward institutions who train people in this field. The effects of climate change a hotter Earth and more droughts and s