NAIROBI, Kenya Aug 1 – Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party leader Raila Odinga has challenged the government to invest in a Compulsory Health Insurance Scheme in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that has exposed the country’s challenges in the health sector.
According to Odinga, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the failures and challenges facing the country’s health care system and lessons need to be picked for improvement.
“If we are to learn any lesson from this pandemic, let it be that going forward we have to do things differently with regard to the health and well-being of our people,” he said.
The former Prime Minister said the scheme should take care of both the employed and the unemployed including farmers and the self-employed with the exemption that the government should pay for the extremely poor.
“The most urgent need facing the country today is how to ensure universal access to quality, affordable and reliable healthcare, both preventive and curative. From primary school days, we were told that prevention is better than cure,” he said.
He has proposed that for the scheme to be effective, Kenyans should contribute to and receive health coverage from the insurance scheme under the principle of “from each according to his/her ability and to each according to his/her need”.
The African Union envoy for Infrastructure regretted that the COVID-19 pandemic caught the country off-guard with inadequate preventive health services “while the curative services were equally wanting with the best reserved for the elite who can pay for it”.
“Even the elite-driven approach has been tested and found below expectation. There are only so many hospitals and so many beds even for those with money,” he said.
Whereas President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration rolled out the Universal Health Coverage to ensure every Kenyan gets affordable and quality health care, Odinga noted that the system continues to experience challenges primarily because it is entirely financed by the exchequer.
With the insurance fund being in place, Odinga stressed that the insurance fund would be critical as Kenyans would be assured of accessing curative services without the debilitating effects of out-of-pocket expenses that is currently a big burden to families in the country.
“Coronavirus has reminded us of things we knew but ignored,” he said.
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