The timing of the implementation of government’s planned National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme is questionable and could have dire consequences for the local economy, Free Market Foundation economist Jason Urbach said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a media briefing in Bryanston, he stated that the NHI was an “impending disaster” and that the NHI White Paper, which was released in December, was introduced at a time when the country had “three Finance Ministers in a week, the rand was plummeting, investors were frantically pulling out of resources and the economy was, and largely remains, in turmoil”.

“You would think that a policy requiring extracting billions of rands from taxpayers would be released at a time when there is an abundance of confidence in the future of the country and not at a time when the economic forecast is dismally bleak,” he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund dealt another blow to the South African fiscal outlook, revising its forecast for gross domestic product growth to just 0.7% from its 1.3% estimate published in October, a 0.6 percentage point downward revision.

Urbach said the NHI would further reduce the quality of healthcare provision in the country and would drive professionals out of the country, resulting in a brain drain and the possible creation of “a huge bureaucracy that government simply will not be able to cope with”.

Further, he said it would impose an “unnecessary and intolerable” burden on taxpayers and government.

He further noted that the NHI White Paper had shown little change from the initial Green Paper, despite a majority of negative comments submitted during extensive public consultation.

Citing financial services company PPS’s Professional Confidence Index survey, Urbach said healthcare professionals were not in agreement with the NHI plan. Eighty-one per cent of 200 respondents noted that the NHI scheme was not the solution to fixing the country’s ailing healthcare system, with 66% not agreeing with the principle behind NHI.

He also said it was worrying that there was a lack of information on how the NHI would be funded and what the cost implications would be.

According to the White Paper, the NHI’s figures were based on a modified costing from the Green Paper on the NHI, which, in 2011, estimated that costs would amount to R255-billion by 2025.

However, there was no indication of what these figures were based on, Urbach said, adding that the “so-called comprehensive package of health services has still not been adequately defined”.

He added that the NHI White Paper stated that “focussing on the question of what NHI will cost is the wrong approach”, opining that this was “disingenuous, trite and downright cheeky”.