Democracy and Development Fellow on Public Health at the Centre for Democratic Development Ghana (CDD-Ghana), Kwame Sarpong Asiedu, says the inability of public hospitals to pay their electricity bills is due to the fact that they are forced to charge unrealistic fees for their services.
His comment was in reaction to the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCO) disconnecting several hospitals in the Bono East region for their failure to settle their electricity arrears which runs into millions of cedis.
According to Kwame Asiedu, till public hospitals are allowed to charge realistic fees for their services, they will continue to run at a loss and their debt will continue to accumulate.
He said, “Health is a public service good and public service goods are not supposed to run at a profit, at best we’re supposed to run and break even. But I can understand also that someone sitting down will say, why can private hospitals and other government health facilities like the religious health facilities pay for their electricity and still survive?
“So why can’t the public sector pay? Then the question arises, is the public sector hospital charging realistic fees? The answer is no, we all know that. So then the cookie starts to crumble because you want them to pay realistic fees but even from parliament’s fees and charges they’re not allowed to charge realistic rates for health.”
He added that the failure of the National Health Insurance Scheme to settle their debts with public hospitals is exacerbating an already serious situation.
He explained that government’s continuous capping of NHIS funds has left the scheme cash strapped leading to them being unable to fulfill their debt obligations to public hospitals.
“The NHIS funds are not coming. We know the NHIS is indebted to these hospitals. Why are the NHIS funds not coming? It’s not coming because since 2017 the same government that is telling these hospitals not to pay has capped the funding to NHIS so the fund doesn’t have liquidity to pay these hospitals,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Minority in Parliament has called for the immediate reversal of the government’s directive for public hospitals to pay their own electricity bills using their internally generated fund.
Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, commenting on the situation described the new policy as outrageous and called for its immediate reversal.
He said, “At least as for hospitals they must be exempted from these disconnections. They have to be exempted especially as this is a new policy. They have to be exempted.
“I mean imagine preterm babies who are in incubators and then they disconnect, we’re just killing the children.
“It is crucial, it is about human life, it is about the right to life and the earlier this policy is reversed, this new policy which started June 2023 which is alien to our country, since independence we have never had this policy. It’s so alien it must be reversed.”
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