Cross River State to Establish Medical Insurance Scheme – Ayade

The Cross River State government is set to establish an insurance scheme to cater for the medical needs of her indigenes. This was disclosed when the Governor met with a team from Clinical Translational Scientific Research led by  it’s chairman, Dr. Lorinda Liang.

Governor Ben Ayade speaking on the new bill that guarantees medical insurance for all Cross Riverians with just N1000 monthly said…

“Only yesterday, our House of Assembly passed our executive bills, which is coming back to me for assent, the bill is aimed at providing medical insurance cover for every Cross Riverian with a statutory requirement of N1,000 per month to access free medical care.

If the government can generate one thousand naira per month from at least two million Cross Riverians, it gives you a total of two billion naira per month. Ultimately, you have two billion a month available to hospitals for drugs, medication and all other support services.

So while non citizens and residents of Cross River State will go to commercial hospitals, and pay, indigenes will be provided with a first-class hospital. If you look at the medical tourism, by the concept of the medical city which we want to have, each senatorial district will have one primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare delivery system in one place. A proposed State Identity Management Board is being set up to provide a biometric ID card for each Crossriverian at the cost of two thousand naira, the ID Card qualifies you to get free access to all medical services at no extra cost; so if you want any of your kids to be captured under the programme, it is just an additional one thousand per month.

We must thank the Cross River State House of Assembly for being very effective. This bill came very fast and in rapid succession, even the Federal Government is keying into it. They are excited and have shown so much interest and representation even at the public hearing, but it is a fantastic concept, it is this concept that “together we do it easier”.

If you look at N1,000 naira a month guaranteeing full medical services it simply means with just N12,000 you are guaranteed free medical care for the whole year; with N2billion every month we can pay all the expatriate doctors that we will need; we will have a specialist unit, eye unit, cancer, hypertension and diabetes; we are going to have about five key centres that will focus on our traditional ailments.

So from the speciality that comes from the program, with the secondary health programme and the primary in the 3 senatorial districts, it means that you don’t necessarily need to be captured under the state structure either as a local government or a state civil servant to be in the programme. Once you have the identity card, it gives you automatic access because it is with the identity card that you will pay your N1,000 a month.

The beauty here is that, there are lots of international funding to support public sector health and a programme of this nature. So even drugs will be supplied by way of support. Federal government is keying into it to support Cross River State Government. Cross River State will be the first state that the whole citizens will be captured under an insurance program with a pricing model that is affordable for everybody. This also means that if you have a medical ailment that is beyond the carrying capacity of our hospital, based on your insurance scheme, this program can send you abroad for treatment. It is all going to be databased.

There is a solar support system in the hospitals to supply the power to ensure this database runs smoothly. It is going to be a massive medical revolution, where with just N1,000 you are guaranteed good health.

We are in touch with the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Bank, they all made inputs into this bill. It is evident that in this programme, there will be a lot of donor support for the scheme, because definitely everybody knows that N1,000 cannot give you a monthly insurance cover nor can N12,000 in a year. But I know that my N1,000 contribution will help support somebody somewhere and indeed provide for those who are not comfortable and I am willing to pay more. So for me as a governor, I am ready to dedicate a certain percentage of my own income to support the insurance programme. The bill also provides for any public person, any person of goodwill who wants to show goodwill to the people of Cross River State. We are also going to approach some successful rich Nigerians to support the insurance programme, so that your child like my child will have access to medication inspite of the circumstances of their parents.

We are going to be on your neck to push for the American Taxpayers, particularly corporate organizations who will be willing to support Africa. To show how successful this programme can be, even when I have not signed it into law, banks are falling over themselves, struggling to provide the support for the hospital construction to start because they want to host the funds coming from the insurance. So if they host that, it means an average of one billion will be running through that account every month.

The take off grant to start up the construction of this hospital is already begging for us to have. So it tells you that the strength or success of government is not the income of the state but the intellectual capacity of the team and that’s why inspite of our challenging allocation, Cross River State has continued to pay salaries, has continued to sustain our security, has continued to keep our environment clean and continue to deepen our concept and ideas to build new cities, new highway, new deep seaport; concepts that as soon as the Federal Government gives us all the approvals, we already have investors waiting. Ideas lead the world, not money.

The idea of this bill is to provide a platform for the poor who cannot afford insurance. This bill is an absolute service to humanity. I will have an international team to manage this fund, so we are going to approach the World Bank to assist us in recruiting managers of this fund, irrespective of their country” he said.

6,202 total views, 3 views today

Short URL: http://www.senatorbenayade.org/?p=774

Posted by admin on Sep 1 2016. Filed under Ben Ayade Desk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry