Minister clears the air on NHIF membership

Dodoma. MPs yesterday demanded an explanation from the Health minister on why at least 23 public entities had not joined the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) against a government directive to have all state-run institutions covered by the public health insurer.

Public servants with the 23 institutions that include the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), Bank of Tanzania (BoT), National Housing Corporation (NHC) and Tanzania Port Authority (TPA) enjoy medical cover with private service providers.

Ulanga MP Goodluck Mlinga (CCM) told the Parliament that the NHIF had a clear mandate to provide health insurance cover for public servants.

In his main question, Mr Mlinga wanted to know how many public entities have so far joined the NHIF since its establishment, and how many were yet to join and why.

And Babati Urban MP Paulina Gekul (Chadema) wanted to know what steps the government was taking to set friendly procedures for ensuring local hospitals are equally benefiting from diverse loans from NHIF.

In her response, Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children minister Ummy Mwalimu said it was mandatory for all public entity to join with NHIF.

“Recently, I held a round-table meeting with the ministry of finance to discuss this, and ensure all public entities that had not joined NHIF immediately do so. But it was revealed that most of them had long-term ccontracts with private health insurers; so we working on ways to professionally terminate the contracts,” she said.

Other institutions that have not joined NHIF are the Public Service Pensions Fund (PSPF), Local Authority Pension Fund (LAPF), Public Pension Fund (PPF), Energy and Water Utility Regulatory Authority (EWURA), NCA and the Government Employee Provident Fund (GEPF).

By March this year, NHIF had a total of 792,987 active members from at least 474,760 members in 2012, according to the minister.

Currently, a total of 307 public entities and departments are members of NHIF, she said.