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Cape Town: South Africa's health minister yesterday signalled that the government planned to further regulate the private health care sector, saying it was profit-driven and not accessible to the poor majority.
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told parliament's health committee that efforts to make health care more affordable and accessible were moving too slowly.
"I have therefore decided that the current challenges in the private sector are best resolved through legislative interventions," she said.
Fourteen years after democratic elections in 1994, South Africa's health care system remains skewed between the haves and have-nots, with an under-staffed and under-resourced public sector system in marked contrast to the care given at private hospitals.
Membership of the 133 private medical schemes operating in the country is growing but is available mostly for middle- and high-income earners, and remains unaffordable for the vast majority of the country's poor.
Only 20 per cent of the country's 47 million population are able to afford private health care, the minister said.
"Despite the high costs of private health care and decreasing affordability of medical scheme membership, health care providers and schemes continue to implement price increases that are unaffordable to the majority of South Africans."
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