To afford the 237,000 pensioners under the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) access to health insurance, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) says it’s planning to extend its flagship health insurance scheme to these senior citizens.
The Director General of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Mohammed Sambo, disclosed this in Abuja when the Executive Secretary of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) visited him in his office recently.
Sambo said extending health insurance to pensioners was consistent with best practices around the world, adding that the most effective care for aging persons was to give them unqualified access to affordable and quality healthcare.
Health coverage for pensioners, he maintained, was a critical aspect of attaining universal health coverage, adding that the government was favourably disposed to ensuring persons who have served the country diligently for a better part of their working lives should have access to care without further financial burden.
On the issue of how the initiative would be funded, Sambo stressed that healthcare must be paid for because it was impossible for it to be free, adding that support by the relevant government agencies would be required to achieve sustainable financing of the scheme.
Within the context of organisations’ support, he noted that the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the Department of State Services (DSS) were already paying for health care coverage of their retirees, as funding healthcare for pensioners was critical to institutionalising the initiative and making it enduring.
Speaking specifically on efforts to be made by the health insurance agency to make the programme succeed, Sambo said the Authority was in a position to commence the process of coverage of pensioners through an internal budgetary provision.
Earlier, the Executive Secretary of PTAD, Chioma Ejikeme highlighted the plight of pensioners around the country, noting that the law setting up PTAD gave leverage to the agency to explore ways of improving the welfare of pensioners.
Ejikeme noted that promoting the welfare of pensioners was central to the operations of the agency, adding that PTAD had worked tirelessly to ensure a transparent and accountable system for retirees.
She said an ICT- driven system codenamed, “I am Alive” Confirmation Solution already in operation has enabled a verification process that cleaned up the database by removing fictitious pensioners, maintaining that PTAD has developed the most reliable data on pensioners.
At the meeting, both agencies resolved to raise a bilateral committee to fine-tune the protocol of enrolling the 237,000 pensioners under PTAD for health insurance nationwide .
