Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1130646,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1130646/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 260,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof.) Ongeri",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 124,
        "legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
        "slug": "samson-ongeri"
    },
    "content": "categories of people who must contribute to this Fund. Such monies as must be appropriated by the National Assembly for indigent and vulnerable persons. I think this message lies that maybe in the process of this Fund, there are people who were affected; who are unable to afford this Fund and cannot be able to afford to pay anything. The national level in their own capacity and motion should be able to pay monies into this Fund by the National Assembly for indigent and vulnerable groups. These vulnerable groups are the majority of the people who cannot afford any health insurance care, and therefore, that aspect is taken care of. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, (iii) gives and grants donations. If this Bill becomes law, it is now mandatory that the funds from the national Government and the county governments and their respective entities, all employers for the administration of the employees‘ benefits will also be factored in. This is captured in (iv). It becomes mandatory now and you cannot run away from it. There was a contentious issue as indicated in (v). These are funds from the post- retirement funds for provision of medical cover to retired employees where the contributor has elected to do so. This basically is voluntary. The main question this House should be looking at is how will these funds be managed? It is an important point and how will the governance structures look like. The Bill fully suggests in Clause 4 that the management of the Fund shall vest in a board, which shall consist the number of people illuminated in Clause 9 of this Bill. I heard some of my colleagues raising an issue on the contribution of the churches. We debated it in detail. However, you cannot expand this board beyond nine members. We must do our best to accommodate everybody within the nine members. Therefore, it is important that the chairperson must be conversant with matters relating to insurance, financial management, economics, health or business administration. Secondly, the Principal Secretary for Health for the time being responsible for matters relating to health and/or a representative appointed in writing, should be members of this committee, as well as the Ministry for the time being responsible for matters relating to Finance because it is a fund. Clause 9(h) says two persons who are not public officers will be appointed by the Cabinet Secretary (CS). This is where we thought the churches should be able to fit in. Having been the Minister for Health, I realized that some of our churches provide health cover for many of our services in the country where the Government or the county government has not set up facilities for its citizenry. Therefore, if we take that into consideration, we can put that in the memorandum. We can say the nomination under (h) should include church members who are in that place. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, this is a fair thing. You cannot complete everything under one cover. It will be too unwieldly, too expensive, but we must have a start. That start starts now because there are many Kenyans today who are suffering because of health issues and they are meeting enormous costs. Even Members of the Senate and National Assembly are being called upon to contribute every other day towards payment of medical bills or expenses. It is important that we roll out this UHC quickly so that we can bring it into operationalization so that people can access the Fund without much ado. I beg to support."
}