The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Ultimate Health Management Services, Otunba Lekan Ewenla, has called for an aggressive nationwide awareness campaign to boost compliance with the Federal Government’s directive mandating employers with at least five workers to enrol their staff in a health insurance programme.
In a statement on Thursday, Ewenla urged stronger collaboration between Health Maintenance Organisations and the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association to drive public enlightenment and ensure that companies understand the benefits and obligations of the policy.
He said HMOs, as drivers of health insurance in the country, must work closely with the National Health Insurance Authority, as well as NECA, to deepen awareness and secure systematic compliance with the law.
According to him, employers are already statutorily responsible for the medical needs of their workers, and compliance should not require additional spending.
He explained that firms simply need to convert the medical allowances currently paid to staff into health insurance premiums.
“The standard configuration of the payroll includes certain percentage of the basic salary as medical allowance along with other benefits like housing, transportation and utility,” he said.
He recalled that at the rollout of the public-sector health insurance scheme in 2005, the Federal Government converted 10 per cent of the basic salary of civil servants, which was their medical allowance, into their health insurance premium.
Ewenla argued that the same approach applies to private-sector firms, noting that “compliance with the directive does not have to lead to spending more on medicals for the staff, as whatever any company is paying as medical allowance is what is expected to be converted to health insurance premium.”
He added that the mandatory-enrolment directive was also designed to create a unified national database of enrollees, tied to their National Identification Numbers, to ensure better planning and accountability.
Ewenla expressed optimism that increased health insurance enrolment would help reverse the trend of medical professionals leaving the country, noting that higher subscriber numbers would lead to greater financial inflows into the health sector and improvements in healthcare infrastructure.
“We will see a lot of doctors and nurses coming back to take up appointments. Healthcare facilities operators will pay better because the healthcare business, like every other business, is driven by volume of patronage,” he said.
