NHI task team
The Actuarial Society of South Africa has undertaken the project of developing a costing model to facilitate quantifying the cost and funding implications of various scenarios for NHI benefit packages and delivery mechanisms. A model has been initially developed by Deloitte with funding provided by Discovery Health and this model has been shared with the Actuarial Society so that it can be populated with data from a wider range of sources and become a resource for all stakeholders in the NHI discussions. The model is flexible enough to consider different benefit packages, roles for existing medical schemes (including no role) and supply-side adjustments. The outputs include overall costing, funding options and supply-side implications.
The Actuarial Society would like to be able to offer a technical resource to all stakeholders that provides costing and funding scenarios under different assumptions in a transparent and objective way. The intention of developing the model as a resource is not to influence discussions on the feasibility and affordability of NHI in either direction but rather to ensure that those parties engaged in the discussion have access to a sound costing methodology to inform their positions and to ensure that implementation of an NHI programme can be undertaken in a financially sound way. Initially the target audience for the model is the NHI Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) which has been tasked with developing a workable proposal. The Actuarial Society would like to offer members of the MAC the resources to run results under scenarios they define. Once these scenarios have become more clearly defined, a wider dissemination of results is envisaged. It should be emphasised that the intention is to provide objective and transparent results to inform discussions that are taking place in various forums.
The task team is continuing to develop the model and doing research to improve the assumptions. Further information can be found below in the documents section.
Contact
Roseanne da Silva [roseanne@worldonline.co.za]
Documents
Sessional meeting presentation 1mb
Discussion document: Burden of disease 455kb
Discussion document: Out of pocket healthcare payments 280kb
Discussion Document: Affordability of Medical Scheme Membership 363kb
Research Tenders
The Actuarial Society of South Africa is in the process of refining a model for testing scenarios related to a National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme. The NHI Task Team has identified a number of areas where additional research is required to support the assumptions used in the model. The areas of research identified are:
- The supply of healthcare products and services
- Utilisation rates for healthcare services among non medical scheme lives
- The economic benefits of NHI
Interested parties are invited to respond to the call for tenders for the first two research topics. The relevant documents are available for download below. The closing date for submissions is 5 August 2011.
Any questions regarding this process may be directed to roseanne@worldonline.co.za
Supply research tender specification 178kb
Utilisation research tender specification 234kb