NHIA is heavily indebted – Sylvester Mensah

The former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) Sylvester Mensah has confirmed claims by the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) that the Authority is ludicrously indebted contrary to stern denials by the former government led by John Dramani Mahama.

In May 2017, the CEO of the Authority, Dr. Samuel Annor, disclosed that the Scheme was broke and unable to pay service providers.

The Scheme is said to owe service providers to the tune of GHc1.2 billion, leading to the Chamber of Pharmacy Ghana and the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) threatening to boycott services to the scheme over the debt.

Confirming the claims of the CEO in response to a direct question on whether the Authority is heavily indebted and collapsing, Mr. Mensah who headed the Authority for six years answered in the affirmative.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to use the word collapsing [but] it is heavily indebted,” he said adding “the truth of the matter is that membership has been growing steadily and utilisation has been rising and of course all that has implication for funding, for financing and so if the original funding sources are not improved to match with the growth of the scheme there will be an imbalance and that is the major problem that the scheme is facing.”

According to him, he expects the new government having won the 2016 election on the back of improving the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) which largely has to do with funding to be able to provide the necessary funding to salvage it.

He said he will not hesitate to contribute his quota to ensuring the scheme is back and running efficiently.

“If the government finds myself useful certainly not for any financial reward I will be willing to offer my service for free. Ghana must succeed and it must experience continues progress,” Mr. Mensah said.