The Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Mohammed Sambo, has announced that the agency has developed a framework to extend health insurance to members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
The disclosure was made by Sambo while speaking at a forum of the newsmen in Abuja, where he said that the gesture was to boost the Universal Health Coverage (UHC). This follows a presidential directive on the enrollment of NYSC members into the NHIS scheme, with both government agencies collaborating to ensure that funding for the initiative is obtained so that it can commence.
He revealed that NHIS had been working with the management of the NYSC on the implementation of the scheme. While pointing out that the NHIS had been working toward addressing the complaints of health service providers that Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) were owing them, he, however, said that some of the complaints sent to the management of the NHIS against healthcare providers and HMOs were without evidence.
The NHIS boss said that as at the end of 2020, the scheme was able to recover N2 billion from the HMOs on behalf of the healthcare providers by virtue of agreement, they negotiated between themselves and decided on the time frame to pay the outstanding N3 million. Sambo said that forensic auditors would dig deep and find out if certain claims by the service providers were verifiable in order to resolve some contentious issues that are still outstanding.
