Is SHA Obligated To Settle Historical NHIF Liabilities?

By: Joseph Mutua Ndonga

The owners of the Private Hospitals are currently piling pressure on Social Health Authority (SHA) to settle historical National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) liabilities.

As Kenyans, we should ask two questions. How did we found ourselves here? Is SHA obligated to settle NHIF liabilities?

It is worth noting that the same owners were the root cause of this mess. The defunct NHIF was their cash cow.

While conspiring with rogue and corrupt-riddled NHIF officials, the owners of private hospitals used to mint billions of shillings.

This is by presenting false claims on the bills incurred by patients who sought treatment in their respective hospitals.

The rogue officials would immediately pocket their share after approving these dubious, inflated bills. Some of them were ghost bills.

This explains why NHIF medical cover catered for only bedding charges.

This is despite this entity receiving billions of shilling from members’ contributors.

Given this background, the Private Hospitals had everything to worry with the rollout of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

This is because the new medical cover which is being implemented by Social Health Authority (SHA) was designed to elbow them out of eating table of NHIF contributions.

Since the inception of UHC, we have been seeing Private Hospitals using all means to derail and sabotage SHA.

This is by among other strategies inciting and bribing some patients to make false claims that SHA is not working.

In so doing, they were also out to paint President William Ruto in bad light by creating a false impression that he took Kenyans for a ride during the 2022 electioneering period.

As we know, the rollout of UHC was one of the key pillars in his manifesto.

Today, besides paying medical bills for patients with those suffering from critical and chronic ailments being the biggest beneficiaries, SHA is ensuring that patients receive timely and quality treatment.

For the first time in our history, President Ruto’s key intervention of recruiting and employing Community Health Workers (CHW) is also working.

107,000 CHW have so far been recruited and are assigned to undertake their duties at grassroot levels across the country.

In every village, there is a health worker who visits every household on his or her own volition and when required to address an emergency issue.

Besides conducting free test to every member of the family to find out whether they are suffering from ailments such as diabetic, hypertension, kidney and heart complications, the health promoter would recommend and help the family with a member, who had a medical condition that needed immediate attention by a doctor, on the best hospital to take him.

As I conclude, allow me to make this clarification.

The poor and vulnerable households are paying a monthly contribution of Sh300 but not Sh880 as earlier indicated. This means the contribution have dropped from Sh500 to Sh300.

Joseph Mutua Ndonga Is A Writer And Social Commentator