NHIS CREATES AWARENESS FOR MOBILE HEALTH INSURANCE AT LAGOS TRADE FAIR

Mobile Health Insurance is a platform for the application of information technology in the operations of the NHIS, and it involves automatic online registration including choice of HCFs and HMOs. The NHIS boss stated that modalities are in place to eliminate fraud in the process, by facilitating identification, using telephone numbers, NHIS number or thumb print, as the case may be, through a central Health Insurance Information Exchange that transmits all related transactions to relevant stakeholders. The required equipment, which he said has been adapted to the local peculiarities of the people, is to be distributed free to over 7,000 accredited facilities nationwide when the programme is fully operational.

Inset: Mr.Aminu Tanimu at the 2014 LAGOS INTERNATIONAL TRADE FAIR Enlightening visitors at the stand on NATIONAL MOBILE HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAMME (NMHIP) National health insurance (sometimes called statutory health insurance) is health insurance that insures a national population for the costs of health care and usually is instituted as a program of healthcare reform. It is enforced by law. It may be administered by the public sector, the private sector, or a combination of both. Funding mechanisms vary with the particular program and country. National or Statutory health insurance does not equate to government run or government financed health care, but is usually established by national legislation. In some countries, such as Australia's Medicare system or the UK's NHS, contributions to the NHI or SHI system are made via taxation and therefore are not optional even though use of the health scheme it finances is. In practice of course, most people paying for NHI will join the insurance scheme. Where the NHI scheme involves a choice of multiple insurance funds, the rates of contributions may vary and the person has to choose which insurance fund to belong to. In the United States, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes a "health insurance mandate" that produces a similar effect as NHI or SHI, though relies more heavily on the private market than their public sector (Medicare, Medicaid, and S-CHIP) than most countries. The US Federal government will be involved in sponsoring several multi-state insurance plans. In Nigeria, NHIS is totally committed to securing universal coverage and access to adequate and affordable healthcare in order to improve the health status of Nigerians, especially for those participating in the various programmes/products of the Scheme. Given the general poor state of the nation’s health services and the excessive dependence and pressure on Government provided health facilities, with the dwindling funding of healthcare in the face of rising cost, the Scheme is designed to facilitate fair financing of health care costs through pooling and judicious utilization of financial risk protection and cost-burden sharing for people, against high cost of health care through institution of prepaid mechanism, prior to their falling ill. This of course is in addition to the provision of regulatory oversight on Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and other players in Healthcare delivery.