Mahama jabs Akufo-Addo for 'mismanagement' of NHIS

Former President John Dramani Mahama is accusing the Akufo-Addo–Bawumia led government of mismanaging the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

According to him, Parliament of Ghana in 2017 passed a law known as ‘Capping and Realignment Bill’ which indicates that all statutory funds will be capped at 25%.

“When they cap it, they give every fund a weight and they take that money out of the fund and put it into the consolidated fund for consumption…..for paying salaries, for goods and services and other things,” he explained.

“So take the case of NHIS, if you take the capping and realignment, it takes almost 400 million out of the NHIS, then under realignment they say you can’t spend another 300 because we are going to use it to pay nursing trainee allowances….under realignment they say you can’t spend another 300 million because we’re going to use it for essential drugs,” he noted.

The former flagbearer of NDC told supporters of the party that joined in the Unity Walk held in the Upper East regional capital, Bolgatanga, that the NHIS instead of having 2.2 billion cedis a year from the NHIS levy ends with 1.3 billion “almost 900 million is gone", he fumed.

Mr Mahama further stressed that this makes it difficult for the government to be paying claims from public and private hospitals.

The former president also accused the government of using the statutory to fulfill its promises after the NPP made everyone believe there was enough money to execute all their promises during the 2016 electioneering period.

“The tragedy is that they said there is money….so you would expect that there is some money they knew about that they were going to use in fulfilling those promises.”

The former President is in Bolgatanga for the 9th edition of the NDC’s unity walk aimed at uniting the party’s rank and file across the country after its defeat in the 2016 general elections.