Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s grandiose campaign promises about the imminent benefits of National Health Insurance (NHI) would be laughable if they had not been so eagerly received by his audience.
With great swagger, he assured a crowd that after the May 29 election they would be able to seek care at any private hospital and the government would foot the bill, all thanks to the ANC’s NHI plan.
Either Lesufi has taken a leaf out of the UK Leave Campaign’s Brexit playbook and is unashamedly lying to voters about the health benefits they will gain by voting for his party, or worse, he really does believe that the supposed benefits of NHI will magically materialise the instant the president signs the NHI Bill into law.
In any case, his promises are a dangerous distraction from the failures of the Gauteng health department. The shocking neglect and indifference revealed in 2017 by the Life Esidimeni inquiry into the deaths of state mental health patients is now playing out for cancer patients who wait in vain for life-saving radiation therapy.
More than a year ago health activists raised the alarm about 3,000 cancer patients who could not even get onto the waiting list for radiation oncology services, prompting the provincial treasury to set aside R784m to procure the care they need from the private sector.
Yet to this day no contracts have been signed, no services provided and cancer patients are needlessly dying. Lesufi should be paying attention to them, not promising ululating grannies pie in the sky.
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