Governor Charity Ngilu's administration has phased out the Kitui County Health Insurance Cover that was resource-draining and difficult to run in favour of a new insurance regime.
This has been done in partnership with the National Health Insurance Fund. Ngilu said that although K CHIC, which she launched in 2018 worked well by enabling residents to access subsidised healthcare, on the flip side, it drained a lot of county funds.
Ngilu spoke on Monday at the NHIF headquarters in Nairobi when she signed an MoU with NHIF chief executive Peter Kamunyo on new health insurance for vulnerable households.
The new deal will see members of 85,000 households access medical care from any of the 8,000 NHIF accredited health facilities across the country.
Ngilu said already 35,000 households were enjoying similar cover, courtesy of the national government, bringing the total beneficiaries to 120,000.
In the now-defunct K CHIC arrangement, Kitui residents under the cover were limited to accessing free health care service in facilities across the county after paying a subscription fee of Sh1,000 annually.
But in the new medical insurance programme, all beneficiaries will get health care services in any accredited public and private health facilities anywhere in Kenya.
“We had put in place K CHIC where every beneficiary household was paying only Sh1,000. We found it difficult because we could not do what NHIF could do,” Ngilu said.
“It worked very well but it was burdening our resources. That is why I decided to work with NHIF.”
The governor said the Kitui households to benefit from the partnership will pay Sh3,000 as part of the Sh6,000 annual cover, while her administration will pay the balance of Sh3,000 on a 50:50 arrangement.
She described the step taken by her administration as a landmark and historic as it was the first time that up to 85,000 people were enjoying subsidised health insurance cover under county government funding.
She thanked President Uhuru Kenyatta for seeing to it that the Universal health insurance cover that she pushed for when she was a minister for health came true.
Kamunyo thanked Ngilu’s government for supporting indigent families to get health care through the health insurance deal.
“As the drivers in ensuring the attainment of the UHC by 2022, we need to make sure that those who cannot afford to pay are identified and supported,” he said.
Kamunyo said the cost of health care had continued increasing and Kenyans were only one illness away from poverty.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
