The Lagos State government calls it out in the Yoruba language: “Ilera Eko”, meaning a healthy Lagos. This emphasises the grassroots quality of the state’s health insurance scheme that is taking a mandatory course. Governor Babjide Sanwo-Olu ratcheted it up again, with a condition: no one can do business with the state without a health card.
It is the state government’s version of civic coercion. No society can grow or prosper without a healthy body and mind. Hence, the state launched the Lagos State Health Insurance Scheme under the Lagos State Health Management Agency (LASHMA).
This policy gained currency in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that has lapped up the lives of many around the world, including quite a few Nigerians, many of them personages. It is to be commended that the state is the first to take this step at that level, forcing health to homes that may otherwise resist it.
The intriguing factor about healthcare is that no one willingly courts diseases; but diseases are always around the corner, self-inviting, sometimes with fatal consequences. This is essentially important for Nigeria’s most consequential state because of its rising population: one of the fastest growing on earth. The programme targets a population of 24 million. The Lagos headcount rises at an annual rate of 3.2 per cent.
The scheme, first launched in 2018, gained momentum in 2020 when Governor Sanwo-Olu approved the payment of 75 per cent of the annual family insurance premium for civil servants, their spouses and a maximum of four children.
Beginning from the civil servants signals a structure of dissemination of the programme until it will cover all demographics in the state.
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The raft of benefits include consultation, treatment of common ailments such as malaria, hypertension, diabetes. It also covers family planning services, dental care, ultra-sound scan, radiological investigations, child welfare services, care of childhood illnesses, neonatal services, gynaecological prenatal care and delivery.
Over 500, 000 residents have been registered — that is a good start. But it indicates a lot of work still has to be done to encourage residents to enlist. It is not absolutely free, but the arrangement is designed to make payments relatively a little burden to all. Hence, it has launched what it calls “pay small, small” plan.
The major industrial and developed countries of the world prize health high and they have arrangements similar to the Lagos version. The United Kingdom has perhaps the best in the world in the avowedly capitalist countries. it is called National Health Services (NHS). It is also contributory and those who participate pay monthly fees.
The logic is that everyone who pays is their neighbour’s keeper. Hence, a person with NHS card could pay about £30 for an hour — or less — of consultation at a good hospital while a person without the card could bleed up to £400. The NHS cardholder may not suffer too much to afford a surgery; but the uninsured would pay up to between £5,000 and £10,000 for a surgery.
In some of the Nordic countries, including Norway and Sweden, health care is virtually free. A Swedish student may be involved in an accident in the United States and the bill of $35, 000 will be picked up by the country because it values its citizens’ health.
Part of the multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill President Joe Biden of the United States is pursuing with congressional compromises contains health components that will foster his predecessor’s Affordable Healthcare Plan, otherwise known as Obamacare.
The idea of affordability is at the bottom of the Lagos plan; and the little contributions by each resident will create a pool of funds to sponsor patients while the subsidy buoys the rest.