Medical Services Principal Secretary Harry Kimtai has come out to clarify the difference between Taifa Care and the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF).
In an interview on KBC TV’s new show-The Shift, PS Kimtai distinguished the two as he committed to Kenyans that the Government was keen on providing affordable and quality healthcare for all.
He came out after the Government re-branded the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) to Taifa Care during President William Ruto’s State of the Nation Address last month, a model the Head of State said would provide effective and efficient healthcare services to Kenyans.
Mr Kimtai noted that Taifa Care talked about the entire ecosystem and the benefits one gets under SHIF where you benefit by your premium contribution.
“We have Primary Health Care Fund, Social Health Insurance Fund and Emergency, Chronic and Critical Illness Fund and therefore the whole package is called Taifa Care because you can benefit from all these funds,” Harry Kimtai, the Medical Services PS said.
He went on to state that the Social Health Authority (SHA) is set to manage three funds, Primary Health Care Fund, Social Health Insurance Fund and Emergency, Chronic and Critical Illness Fund as part of the governments healthcare reform agenda.
This new system introduced by the Kenya Kwanza administration replaced the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to ensure the public accesses quality healthcare at an affordable cost.
“The NHIF system we were using had challenges, and therefore, we had to overhaul the system and we needed an integrated health care system not just to deal with claims,” PS Kimtai said.
He added, “When we cross-checked the data that was in NHIF with the National Registration Bureau, there were 3 million people who cannot be traced.”
He said the defunct NHIF had a lot of challenges as the system was not working.
“The defunct NHIF owes hospitals billions of shillings, some claims date back to 10 years, there was need to fix that by leveraging on digitization,” PS Kimtai said.
According to the Medical Services PS, over 15.8 million Kenyans are now registered, advancing the goal of a fully publicly financed primary healthcare system.
The Health Ministry has highlighted that through SHA, Kenyans now have access to free primary healthcare services at public health facilities, as well as contracted private and faith-based facilities.
The program includes 8,336 contracted healthcare facilities, with 5,210 government-owned, 319 faith-based, and 2,807 private facilities.
Muraya Kamunde
