- The decision to extend health insurance to youth corps members is sound
Perhaps there are few occasions when a decision is both good policy, and good reaction to a tragedy.
The decision of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), in concert with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), to extend health insurance to every serving corps member, is excellent on both counts.
Coming after the recent tragedy of the death of three corps members, two of them first class graduates, at very early stages of service, the Federal Government should be commended for responding to those tragedies with a sound NYSC health policy.
True, not a few would say such comprehensive health cover should have come much earlier. Still, it is a thing of cheer that the policy is in place now.
NHIS Executive Secretary, Prof. Usman Yusuf, visiting NYSC Director-General, Brig-Gen. Suleiman Kazaure in Abuja, announced that serving NYSC members would henceforth be beneficiaries of health insurance coverage, with premiums paid for by the Federal Government. That way, every corps member is guaranteed free consultation, treatment and drugs.
To make the plan work, Prof. Yusuf disclosed, youth corps members posted to NHIS would henceforth be named liaison officers in hospitals across the country. On that beat, they would be able to coordinate and ensure fellow members receive prompt attention in their host hospitals.
Also, the scheme would be organised such that the moment the corps members emerge from the orientation camp to their areas of primary assignments, each corps member would know which hospital(s) he could access for consultation, treatment and drugs. The processes of referrals would also be clinically handled, such that the line of treatment and care is never disrupted at any point on the continuum.
Prof. Yusuf was quoted as saying whereas corps members were in the past treated as “lepers”, now they would be treated as “kings”. Nice one, that pledge. Still, the NYSC, in concert with NHIS, should ensure they walk their talk, and the corps members are indeed “kings”.
There is even talk of making arrangements for the Federal Government to make direct payments to the hospitals, thus by-passing the Health Management Organisations (HMOs), the retail arm of the NHIS, some of who stand accused of delaying payment to hospitals, long after policy holders must have received treatment.
It is highly unfortunate if some HMOs are guilty as charged. Such guilty parties should be severely sanctioned under the law. Also, nothing appears wrong in any method to fast-track payment to hospitals, after they have delivered on their own end of the bargain.
Still, that should not be done at the risk of rupturing the NHIS system, where both the care givers (hospitals) and the health dealers (HMO) have specific functions to perform under the NHIS law. Not even the need to deliver on the new NYSC-NHIS collaboration should justify truncating the ordered, payment process.
Therefore, let the NYSC health insurance scheme operate within the NHIS model. Any exceptionalism, no matter how attractive in the short run, could only engender long-term disaster.
Still, the NYSC health insurance cover should be timely reminder that the whole scheme itself needs sweeping reforms. Though health insurance is some non-cash payment to members, it can’t excuse the stipend paid the members which, to put it mildly, is a joke. Concrete efforts should be made to attune the allowance with present economic realities.
That, of course, borders on rising costs, in the face of present economic realities. But that is the crux. It is either the government raises enough funding to make the service what it really should be, or rethink the whole scheme.
