By Matthew Denis
An Insurance Expert, Mr. Peter Ademola Fayomi has called on the Federal Government to make insurance coverage compulsory for every Nigerian towards better healthcare delivery service in the country.
Fayomi, the Principal Manager and Marketing Coordinator of Maayoit Healthcare made the call during an interview with Pilot Health on Friday.
“We want to call on the Federal Government to legislate health insurance coverage for every Nigerian. This will go a long way in creating more awareness and advocacy for insurance activities in the country.
“We believe with legislation compelling every Nigerian to have health insurance, there will be increased coverage and acceptability. This will reduce high rate of mortality and provide efficient healthcare facilities by insurance institutions/organisations.
The expert noted that health insurance coverage is still quite low in the country when compared to what is obtained in advanced countries.
“This is the major challenge confronting the health sector but I believe with practical and proactive strategies all these elements will become a thing of past.
On services of his company, he said as Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), with about 15 branches, it is providing health insurance coverage for people across the country.
“We are licensed as HMO to finance healthcare for people, meaning that you don’t need to pay cash from your pocket when you are in the hospital or have any emergency case.”
According to him, health insurance programmes varies depending on what clients want to key into such as social health insurance programme for federal civil servants under the National Health Insurance Scheme as regulators.
He said, “there is health insurance programme for the formal sector and informal sectors. We have programmes for the military and paramilitary personnel, vulnerable programmes for children under five years. We have programmes for the private sectors, self employed etcetera.”
On the issue of dichotomy in the health sector, he explained that the service provider and HMO have a multidisciplinary approaches.
He, however, said the dichotomy in the sector has become a major challenge to healthcare delivery.
“As Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) what would be the benefit of people paying us premium and aren’t getting the required services due to incessant industrial actions.
“On our part, we suggest to our clients to change alternatives during the Joint Health workers strike to enable enrolees benefit for such services elsewhere.
He also called for the privatisation of government hospitals across the country to end the issue of dichotomy in the health sector.
