News:
March 5, 2025
Former Chairman of the Health Committee in the eighth Parliament, Dr Nana Ayew Afriye has taken a swipe at the Finance Minister Dr. Ato Baah Forson Cassiel and urged him to apologize to Ghanaians and admit that the promises they made while in opposition to uncap the National Health Insurance fund is not workable.
According to him the previous New Patriotic Party government capped the NHI but the then Minority made a lot of noise about it including President John Dramani Mahama that some funds in the health fund was moved to support the national budget.
“We are expecting nothing less than a full allocation of what was received in the health fund to the NHIA. If the finance Minister says we misused funds and talked of shortfall as we see in the media, I disagree with him, he is intelligent and I would not take his words for granted”.
Again, we approved NHIA in this parliament; it’s a joint effort of the two parties – Majority and Minority. If there is misuse, we have been here several years to approve the budget and they never raised this issue here, he stated.
“Why would you say misuse? You are now Minister of finance, you were a leader of the Minority then, and you have gone to a new office, admit that I spoke more than I should, the reality has caught up with me, I have to go round it and it comes with admitting and apology”.
We are interrogating the position of the Minister of Finance; our expectation is that the NHIA is bringing in funds of about eleven billion Ghana cedis, we want to know what has been actualized, and then we can know what the meaning of a short fall is, the former Chairman of the Health Committee stated.
According to him, during the 24 campaign and on page l02 of the NDC manifesto, the current President said they were going to uncap the NHI, stating that the previous government made eight billion last year but allocated only 6.4billion to the NHIA.
In this practice, government takes some bit of the health fund to support its budget. The whole world was made to understand that, that practice was inimical to the country and the campaign message of the NDC was that they would make all the revenue available to the NHIA.
He asserts that having gone into office, the Finance Minister sees that it is so difficult to uncap, that is to give all the resource from the health fund to the NHI and the only way to go about it is to say that there is misuse of resources and also there is a shortfall; it is not true, they are passing the back door.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com