It’s very clear that Mr Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND government don’t know where they are headed, and that is very dangerous. Their greatest achievement is directionless leadership. Mr Hichilema appears to be in control, but no one knows where he is leading. We all make mistakes.
But few people have been consistently wrong on all the great issues that faced our nation over the last half decade as Mr Hichilema has. Blunders are everywhere. Wherever one turns, there’s a crisis – the body, electricity, diesel, soccer, cost of living, health services, and so on and so forth. Today, there’s a very serious crisis at NHIMA threatening the lives of so many people.
At the rate they are mismanaging NHIMA, it will become very difficult to rescue it even by a new government.
The failure to pay hospitals is a symptom of deeper misgovernance and gross incompetence on the part of Mr Hichilema and his UPNDgovernment.
NHIMA has two many internal ailments; no interest and capacity to collect contributions, and sadly, absent is cost control.
Instead of increasing collections, they removed key diseases from their list. Instead of deploying collection systems, they are now delaying paying private hospitals.
Instead of finding innovative medical equipment financing methods, they are directly procuring medical equipment paying huge upfront sums, thereby taking money meant to pay claims to private hospitals.
It’s a sad state of affairs. In the original design of NHIMA, with universal access to quality health care at the core, private health facilities were critical players. Because of their ability to expand quickly and offer better quality than public health facilities, it incorporated a 30-day FIFO ( First In First Out) robust claims payment system. All these seem to have been abandoned. It also incorporated effective claims fraud detection, prevention, and management protocols. Again, these were diluted, and we saw the blame shifted to private health facilities.
Most critically, there was a claims collection and management model that should have expanded collections even at the current 1%. The model was dumped as “private sector” obsession in a parastatal where BOMA won’t allow NHIMA to collapse even if no collections were made.
At this point, the government must immediately release the Statutory Instrument to increase the contribution rate from 1% to 2.5% and the contribution base from base to gross salary. On condition that management and the board have a tight contribution collection and management strategy, and that claims and overhead costs are reigned in .
Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party
Bitterness, hatrages, jealous and tribalism at highest stage by someone who are not going to win election in 2026
Again, this chap fails to distinguish between organisation or management failure and political failure.Hatred and morbid jealousy has brainwashed Membe to near psychosis
What a failure of a man with a delayed mid-life crisis. Only your shoes!!
Ati tizadya ma pose yabo. Kikiki….
Wenye baba. If it was you in charge, there would have been a disaster. Even the hatred you are spewing daily, if from someone else, would not have been possible. You cannot be so full of hate. I expect you to talk about university bursaries and meal allowances, lowering mealie prices, how and health provision, how. Not daily attacking someone. If you took over it would be expected that you carry one some of the good things from the current, not 100% anew. Then we would be in a disaster.
Ba Membe yo went bankrupt and defaulted paying the internal loans you took only to liquidate yourself.Paying tax was a war.Nowwhat?If can’t run your own business what about the country?
This Fossil also! Even Dolika Banda, the “New Kid on the Block” may get more Votes than him in 2026. Maybe even win the Presidency and become the first female Zambian President, while he will remain dressing in his stupid looking Socialist/Marxist clothes, which every Socialist, with even the slightest brain has discarded and thrown away.
If all the UPND achievements are failures to you, then you should have a serious mental problem. There is no sane person who can agree to what you are saying, people are seeing for themselves and people say seeing is believing. If Zambia had embarked on such a developmental agenda immediately after independence in 1964, we could have been very far as a country by now. The ubomba mwibala attitude ruined our country because most politicians stopped seeing beyond their stomachs and pockets.