President John Mahama
I don’t know what he wanted his audience and the rest of the Ghanaian citizenry to make of his rather lame electioneering campaign argument that, somehow, the leaders of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), who are also founders of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), are being hypocritical in claiming that since the National Democratic Congress’ operatives reassumed the reins of governance in January 2009, the NHIS has literally gone to the dogs (See “Stop Registering Your Members on NHIS if it has Collapsed” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/25/16).
The fact of the matter is that under the Mills-Mahama government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and presently the Mahama/Amissah-Arthur regime, the NHIS has lost much of its credibility with some healthcare providers flatly refusing to accept the NHIS cards as a legitimate means of payment for healthcare delivery. And so what President Mahama ought to be talking about right now is not the question of whether his NPP critics have been registering their party members and supporters onto the scheme which, by the way, they themselves created; but rather whether, indeed, under the stewardship of the National Democratic Congress, the scheme has significantly improved its credibility, as Mr. Mahama would have Ghanaians believe. Merely claiming that under President John Agyekum-Kufuor, the man who created the scheme, only 9 million people were subscribed to the NHIS, as opposed to the current number of 29 million subscribers, woefully begs the question.
What the NDC leader ought to be addressing is why he and his associates so woefully lack practical and creative initiative skills that it took the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party to have the quality of the health of the average Ghanaian significantly improved, when all along these same shameless cynics had been taunting the conscientious and innovative creator of the NHIS as a blind man chasing a pipe-dream. And were he a man of integrity, Mr. Mahama would also have added that of the 9 million subscribers registered by the close of the Kufuor administration, this self-righteous critic and his late boss, President John Evans Atta-Mills, and a legion of other NDC stalwarts, had been beneficiaries of the same scheme that they had earlier on pooh-poohed.
As well, the question of efficiency overrides that of whether former President Kufuor had invested some GH? 183 million, as opposed to the Mahama regime’s having sunk a whopping GH?1 billion into the scheme, for we all are well aware of the fact that not long ago, a former director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) was arrested, had all his known bank accounts frozen and charged with funding embezzlement. In other words, glibly trotting out statistics the way he is doing may sound impressive to the naïve and untutored, but for those of us avid students of Ghanaian politics, it is the impact of such investment on the ground that matters.
The fact of the matter is that neither President Mahama nor any of his key point men and women can point to a single quality-of-life improvement program or project that was not originally conceived, designed and implemented by the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party. The tragedy of having Ghanaians saddled with a parasitic political machine like the Rawlings-minted National Democratic Congress, is the fact that whatever gains notched by the progressive leaders of the New Patriotic Party are certain to be almost immediately reversed or poorly maintained by these Abongo Revolutionaries, whose primary concern and loyalty are to themselves, their immediate family members and cronies.
On December 7, 2016, when Ghanaians enter the polling booth, the choice before them will be between retaining a government thoroughly and hopelessly composed of unconscionable freeloaders, on the one hand; and auspiciously returning one that practically created all the institutional incentives and quality-of-life improvement resources and benefits Ghanaians are presently enjoying or, properly speaking, whatever may be left of the same.
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