Sizani Universal Healthcare is a decent alternative to National health Insurance(NHI)

Sizani Universal Healthcare(SUH) is a Democratic Alliance's alternative to National Health insurance(NHI). It will be free at the point of service. The plan is meant to deal with our known healthcare challenges: crumbling infrastructure;critical medication stock-outs, long waiting times in queues and public healthcare professionals who are evidently over-stretched.

"Sizani will see the implementation of a national strategic resource allocation scheme to operate within the first tier of government. This scheme would allocate a universal subsidy in respect of every eligible person in South Africa, irrespective of whether or not they are covered by the public or private health systems. Sizani Universal Healthcare (SUH) will ensure a comprehensive package of quality services within the public health system–free at the point of access to everyone while retaining and reforming the medical aid system. This scheme would allocate a universal subsidy in respect of every eligible person in South Africa,irrespective of whether or not they are covered by the public or private health systems. Every person will be able to choose whether to buy public or private sector cover with their subsidy–with rules against opportunistic movement between the two" Democratic Alliance.

Sizani Universal Healthcare (SUH) is differs to the NHI on many respects. SUH also have some unanswered questions. They talk about the rules to prevent opportunistic movement between public and private health, for example. What does that even mean? How are they going to set those rules? What will be the criteria?

Sizani Universal Healthcare (SUH) calls for the reform of medical aid to compete on quality of care and cost rather than the present risk pool based system. The plan also calls for the introduction of Quality of Care Regulator to replace Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC). That regular will have broader mandate including defining and reviewing the‘ standard package’ funded by the universal subsidy and oversee and audit the actual quality of care provided by all public and private health facilities. Democratic Alliance sees National Health Insurance Fund as another SOE that will be prone to corruption. They also view NHI as the attempt to nationalize private healthcare and remove funding and functions from provinces. DA rules Western Cape and have being calling for more devolved government so their opposition should be understood in that context.

In short, the ideological orientation of both a parties is seen in their respective plans. NHI(ANC) wants more government involvement and centralization whereas SUH(DA) advocate for the opposite.

Some parts of the SUH proposals do not seem viable. Those include implementing the plan without increasing the healthcare budget and having it done in 5-8 years. I do not believe is possible to implement this plan without extra financial resources. I also doubt if the plan can be done in such as short period of time.

There are many things i love about this DA plan though such as the decentralization or the so called "localized accountability systems". DA believes in city states whereas ANC prefers empires.