You may by now have heard that the Kenya Kwanza government has rebranded its premier national health insurance cover Social Health Insurance Fund – SHIF – to Taifa Care.
The change was abrupt, becoming public only during President William Ruto’s State of the Nation address in Parliament on Thursday last week.
SHIF, administered by the Social Health Insurance Authority
(SHA) replaced the old National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) effective October
1, 2024.
During his address, the third since ascending to power on
September 13, 2022, Ruto repeatedly referred to SHIF as Taifa Care, leaving
many wondering when the rebranding went down.
Throughout his speech, not once did the President mention SHIF about the new cover touted as the best vehicle to deliver Universal Health Coverage.
“Despite serving a limited class of citizens, NHIF
nevertheless accumulated billions of shillings of debt because of misalignment
between contributions and the actual cost of healthcare,” Ruto said.
“Taifa Care has undertaken an accurate costing of all healthcare-related goods and services, to provide timely, effective and efficient service to everyone.”
During the debate on the President’s address in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Makueni MP Suzzane Kiamba wondered when this huge policy decision was made without even the knowledge of legislators.
“I have so many questions to ask on the President’s speech and I wish these issues could actually be put into context. One, I think the concept of SHA was very beautiful but the implementation as far as I’m concerned remains a scam,” she started off.
The MP said the people taking much of the burden of servicing the new healthcare insurance are the salaried Kenyans, noting that Kenya is not for the salaried people alone.
“When they carry the burden of SHA without the big
businessmen who are not in SHA (and) the informal sector, you make the salaried
people a slave,” the lawmaker remarked.
As it stands, the MP lamented, the SHA and its SHIF delivery vehicle is discriminatory as not everyone is on board.
“Secondly, honourable Speaker, when we were in this House I heard also SHA is Taifa Care. How many things are being introduced outside this Parliament?” Kiamba asked.
In her opinion, terms used in Parliament particularly regarding policy issues should be in alignment with the House Standing Orders.
“I think it is respectful the terms we get
in this Parliament continue to be used consistently, otherwise we are a House
for decoration, we are not a House to make decisions for Kenyans,” she said.
“I was very shocked to hear Taifa Care
while I knew very well we had SHA and we had SHIF, which we all knew. I think
it’s very demoting for people behind the curtains to go and start having other
funny names because it erodes Kenyans' trust, you wonder when those names were
crafted.”
MP Kiamba further questioned how allocations for chronic diseases was arrived at saying the amounts are too little to cater
for complete treatment of patients.
A person who needs dialysis is entitled to Sh6,000 per
session, how much is dialysis? Let’s
unpack this and let’s not pretend that we are newcomers in Kenya. If you give
Sh6,000 for dialysis per family, what actually are you giving?” she asked.
“That’s a big joke, I think that needs to be reviewed.
The MP spoke a day after the Ministry of Health reaffirmed its commitment to providing affordable and quality healthcare for all Kenyans.
During a meeting with faith-based health stakeholders, Health
CS Deborah Barasa confirmed significant progress in the implementation of Taifa
Care and the rollout of the Social Health Authority (SHA).
She said over 15.2 million Kenyans are now registered to receive treatment across 8,336 contracted healthcare facilities, 5,210 being government-owned, 319 faith-based, and 2,807 private facilities.
