Why Nigerian govt can’t fund healthcare alone – Osinbajo

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday explained why the Federal Government cannot fund the healthcare delivery in the country alone.

Osinbajo, who stated this at the primary healthcare summit organised by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), noted that annual budgetary allocation to the health sector was not enough to fund the nation’s healthcare.

He said: “In dealing with out-of-pocket expenses, I think we clearly need compulsory health insurance where premiums for certain categories of vulnerable groups are paid by the government.

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“There’s no way that healthcare funding can be paid by the government budget alone. It is simply impossible. The size of the federal government budget itself is so constrained that there is absolutely no way that we can expect to fund healthcare by just budgets.

“So, healthcare insurance is an important pool of resources for funding healthcare on the scale that will be required for a country of 200 million people or more.”

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