ASHIA to increase drug tariff a second time within one year – says ASHIA MD

By Okafor Chisom

Anambra State Health Insurance Agency (ASHIA) is set to increase its drug tariff a second time within one year to protect beneficiaries from suffering catastrophic health expenditure.

The Managing Director/CEO of ASHIA, Dr Simeon Onyemaechi, said that considering the increased cost of medical consumables and medications, rather than increase ASHIA co-insurance percentage nor the premium paid by enrollees, a decision was reached to review the medicine tariff from the third quarter of the year 2023 to enable the healthcare providers to continue rendering quality care without compromise.

He said this while in a quarterly meeting with the Medical Directors and Hospital Administrators of all ASHIA accredited hospitals at ASHIA headquarters in Awka.

According to him the revised tariff will reflect current market prices to protect ASHIA beneficiaries from suffering catastrophic health expenditure.

‘’The reason is that this ASHIA is a social health insurance scheme and the government won’t let it become a private health insurance where people will struggle to to pay high premium, rather we will take a bit more of the burden to see how far we can go with it in alleviating the suffering of our people.

The MD/CEO took the opportunity to announce the expansion of ASHIA benefit package to include introduction of Histology specimen analysis for surgical patients.

He charged the healthcare providers to play by the rules in attending to ASHIA enrollees especially with regards to providing the beneficiaries all their medications as contained in ASHIA drug tariff.

Dr Onyemaechi charged them to do all within their powers to encourage people to enroll into the scheme through quality care.

He noted that “the huge out of pocket health expenditure borne by uninsured persons is regressive, a barrier to proper health-seeking behavior and accounted largely for the poor negative indices experienced among uninsured persons.

There was an extensive open house discussion that availed the healthcare providers present to clear the doubts on issues of concern to them in the line of service delivery within the scheme.(MOI)