The Association of Nigerian Private Medical Practitioners (ANPMP) has threatened to stop rendering services to patients with insurance cover under Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs).
The association’s national President, Iyke Odo, in a statement over the weekend, said the boycott would take effect from February 1, 2022, if HMOs failed to increase their tariffs and renegotiate their service agreements with health providers.
Odo said despite the high cost of goods and services in Nigeria, the public is yet to adapt to the fact that hospitals and clinics are also affected and thus, cannot charge the same.
He also faulted the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), stating that “health providers have become burden bearers of the nation’s insurance project” as “due process, standards and accountability have been negated”.
“Health insurance is managed care but the only way its principles can stand is when the conditions necessary to drive a successful health insurance scheme are met and they include appropriate premium pricing, appropriate service tariff pricing amongst others,” Odo said.
“Change in price occurs almost daily. Nigeria has not witnessed price summersault as it has done in the last two years. No cost of medication, medical consumables, medical devices, medical equipment, food items and general cost of living has remained the same.
“Nigerians are adapting and adjusting to spending more for everything else in the environment but hospitals and clinics are rather expected to charge less than they were charging despite the obvious course of inflation.
“This is why today, well over ₦15 billion of providers claims across the country is trapped with the HMOs under various guises. Following that outing, the HCPAN constituted a joint tariff review committee to actualise the proposed minimum service tariff, and today, here we are.
“The NHIIS is not favouring up to 10% of private providers on account of poor enrollment. The state support health insurance schemes have shortchanged you and I across the country.
“Private health insurance has made many of the providers’ mere labour workers, an inch away from slave labour. This is not health insurance. This is exploitation.
“This is an open war on the Nigerian healthcare system and a sure path to the poverty of providers. Much as we desire health insurance, our government should give us health insurance, not make beliefs or look-alikes. If we cannot have health insurance the way it is known to be productive and equitably beneficial, then it should be abolished until we are ready.
“This is a clarion call to all members and to all private providers across the country to use the recommended tariff and renegotiate their services agreements with their HMOs effective 1/2/22. The tariff is the minimum. You can go above it, but you should not come below it.”
