I never thought a day will come when I will have to agree with any decision Buhari has taken. On the NHIS thing, I regretfully have to admit that he was right.
We had all condemned the reinstatement of the NHIS Boss who was accused of corruption.
NHIS started functioning in 2005. It’s 13yrs old this year. NHIS covers 3million Nigerians. It’s about Health Care but because of corruption, the agency has not performed well. Politicians turned NHIS into an ATM.
Let me explain
HMOs -Health Maintenance ORG’s, are all private companies, most are owned by politicians, and they are the real problem of NHIS. They are middle men between NHIS and the hospitals. They have so enthroned corruption to another level in the place.
The HMOs receive money from NHIS on behalf of the people to pay hospitals so that Nigerians on the NHIS scheme can enjoy medical services. But the HMOs refuse to pay the hospitals and instead withhold the money for their own private uses. HMOs are paid 3 months in advance in other for them to pay hospitals early, but they were not paying.
What they do instead with the NHIS money:
A. They fix it in banks to accrue interest.
B. They buy forex and do trading with it.
C. They take loans using it as collateral. When banks know you are getting massive funds from NHIS, they give you 10 times the amount in your account.
So instead of the HMOs to pay the hospitals as agreed on time, they are heavily indebted to all hospitals nationwide, thus crippling healthcare services nationwide. They owe National hospital alone N400million. It’s a major cartel.
There are 57 HMOs. They are the cartel at NHIS. They work hand in hand with every Minister of Health, Board Members, the Executive Secretary of the NHIS (EX) & politicians in government to run the place to the ground.
Apparently this new executive of NHIS, Prof. Usman Yusuf refused to play ball & they declared war on him.
Someone early this year contacted me from NHIS that , Prof. Usman Yusuf is destroying the agency, etc and that they were appealing to my organization to come to their rescue. I told him I needed to do my due diligence but unfortunately I never did. We all joined later to crucify the man.
So this EX appointed by Buhari came and found out that there was massive corruption going on at NHIS & he wanted to stop it but the cartel “HMOs” declared war on him. The HMOs said he can’t stop the norm & teamed up with politicians in Buhari’s government to start fighting him.
The HMOs got the support of the Board Chairman of NHIS and other members of the Board who are all politicians. Got the support of the Minister of Health & other politicians. What was the crime of this executive guy? He wanted to block where politicians are eating.
The issue they had with the Prof. Usman Yusuf were:
* They were not paying hospitals and he wants them to pay as at when due.
* Many of their licenses had expired since 2013 & he was asking then to renew before they get disbursements of money, etc.
* One of the conditions he gave was that every HMOS must go to the hospitals to get a letter of non indebtedness signed by the CMD before they will get funds from the agency.
* The hospitals were happy with the new development but HMOs were unhappy.
The NHIS is so strategically important to Nigerians. In a working country, every citizen should be captured in the scheme. NHIS pays Federal, State & even private hospitals through HMOs. Nigerians on the scheme are the main beneficiaries.
Many workers are on the scheme. NHIS also pay Military & Police hospitals nationwide. The police alone have over 800k officers and their dependents on the scheme.
The ministry of health and politicians are the number 1 problem of NHIS in Nigeria. They use NHIS as an ATM. Because the executive guy stopped them, he was suspended on allegations of corruption which many of us believed because of media trial. EFCC then investigated him.
The reason he was reinstated was because EFCC did not find him wanting according to my friend that works there. He said after his reinstatement, the guy became tougher on the HMOs and the Board & the Minister began to plot his removal again.
The guy was just suspended again on the eve of delisting many unqualified HMOS. A premptive move by the NHIS Board & the Minister. The union is also on the payroll of the HMOs.
The HMOs are the real cartel at NHIS.
HMOs were angry that the guy instituted a forensic audit of NHIS finances. Audit discovered that N46billion of NHIS money were stashed in different banks. These are people’s money ooo. The HMOs say the EX is using EFCC, CBN, AG, Accountant General & Asset Recovery to fight them.
Our national & State hospitals are under funded and many of them survive on the NHIS money. For instance, FMC Asaba got only about N18million from the budget last year & they require over N10million to power the hospital with diesel. So how will they survive without NHIS funding?
So if the HMOs take money from NHIS and refuse to give the hospitals, they are destroying our health sector. The Union, the Board and the Ministry of Health should stop the rubbish they are doing to cripple our health sector.
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