NHI goes Northside City and cayes
Posted: 07/08/2007 - 11:34 AM
Author: Adele Ramos
The Government hopes to complete the full rollout of the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme by the end of the year, and the Ministry of Health, Central Health Region, has embarked on a registration campaign to sign up as many as 24,000 people from Belize City’s Northside and the cayes for phase three of the roll-out.
Health officials say that they hope to register 12,000 at the Cleopatra White Poly Clinic by the end of August, and another 12,000 people are being targeted in the cayes.
Currently, only residents of Southside Belize City and the Southern Health Region – Toledo and Stann Creek – are covered under the scheme, which was piloted in 2001 and established in 2003. Under the scheme, Government subsidizes health care for registered patients at both private and public medical facilities.
The program enables Belizeans to access primary health care services for free or with minimal co-payment, and coverage includes consultations, diagnostics as well as medication. Maternal and child health care are included under the program.
The current expansion of the NHI will only cover Belize City residents as far as the flour mill at Mile 1½ on the Northern Highway, said the deputy regional manager of the Central Health Region, Joan Flowers.
Flowers said that registration is quick and easy, and all patients need to do is to take their Social Security cards to the health center and say they want to sign up with the center. People who live on the cayes should register with their local clinics – the San Pedro Polyclinic and the Caye Caulker Health Center.
She also told us that they are currently undertaking a door-to-door campaign to get people registered. Field officers will advise those who don’t yet have a Social Security card what they could do to get one, Flowers added.
With the planned expansion of the NHI countrywide, the program will cost roughly $21 million, Government officials have informed.
The NHI program is financed from public funds coming from the Social Security Board, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance. Health Minister Joe Coye recently told the media that he supports using a part of the Petroleum Fund to finance the NHI.
Financial Secretary Joe Waight explained that the NHI Fund, which is administered by the Social Security Board, is financed almost 50-50 by Central Government’s Consolidated Revenue Fund and the SSB. SSB would meet $11 million of the annual cost for the countrywide program.
In previous years, the Social Security Board has earmarked $5 million annually from its employment injury branch for the NHI fund.
In his budget for the current financial year, Prime Minister Said Musa had said that $4 million would be put in the recurrent budget for the Ministry of Health for the expansion of the NHI program to the rest of the country, and there was a total allocation of $2 million in capital budget.
The original proposal was for the program to be funded through direct payroll deductions, and Government officials indicate that this option, as well as an increase in Social Security deductions, has not been entirely ruled out.
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