Mahama collapsed NHIS – CEO

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was a pale shadow of itself during the previous administration, Dr Yaw Annor, Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), has said.

According to him, the scheme was riddled with severe corruption and inefficient use of its resources.

Speaking on GHOne’s State of Affairs on Wednesday May 17, Dr Annor said: “We all knew the scheme had collapsed and that was the reason why the President brought me on.

“If you go by how a health insurance scheme must run, that is having reserves of about three to six months and being capable of looking after its members, one will say that the scheme is more or less bankrupt because the reserves are not there. And as you are all aware, we owe service providers and our contractors almost to the tune of GHS1.2billion. This really shouldn’t have arisen.

“Ghanaians have had their own perception about how the scheme had run, people have had concerns about corruption, people have had concerns about inefficient use of their funds and these are areas that we are looking at very seriously.”

He further indicated: “We need to cut out corruption, cut out fraud…get government again to widen the basket [to raise revenue to sustain the scheme].”