The National Health Insurance Authority is proposing a special tax on sugar-sweetened and alcoholic beverages as additional source of funding for the National Health Insurance Scheme.
The new levy would be put on beverage companies, which would be taxed according to how much sugar is in their products and the money realised placed in the “health box” of the Scheme.
Dr. Samuel Annor, Chief Executive Officer of the Authority gave the hint at an Organised Labour forum on NHIA in Ho on government’s proposal to deduct an additional one per cent of workers salary for the Scheme.
He said the tax would help take care of the health of consumers of such products and reduce intake of such products towards lowering healthcare costs.
Dr. Annor said the consumption of sugary and alcoholic beverages posed health problems to consumers and that the tax on such products would help improve the financial status of the Scheme, which would benefit consumers.
He said the Scheme had not been able to function efficiently due to financial constraints and said taxing such products would help revive the Scheme.
Dr Annor said every health scheme should have a minimum of six months reserve fund for its beneficiaries but Ghana had none, due to unavailability of fund.
Source: GNA
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. |
Folks this is a proposal and let's all encourage the authority of the scheme to find a way to get money into the scheme for this is the most important way to secure many life in this country. Many govts have come and gone without looking at all these rather look the scheme. Those talking about hospitals and administrators are not far from right but there should be a starting point. IT application should also work and we can always learn from countries that have done successfully like South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore ect. Ghana will work if we all do our best to help
what you need is the proper audit of the claims. hospital administrator, doctors ect steal from the fund. if you conduct critical audit with accountants, pharmacists, you could get better results for the claims. you could also improve your IT applications by making it a 'just in time' . otherwise any amount that you collect would be whettle away by corrupt personalities like hopital administrators and doctors.
ahhhhhhhh , I thought you are rather going to give a guideline on how the user to go about using it or stop using it based on their health.the tax is not your work GRA is there so operate within your boundary