The Director of Communication at the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has explained that the 10% service tariff increment is meant to address the “top-up” demands on its scheme subscribers.

According to Mr Oswald Mensah, there has been a phenomenon where healthcare providers have made illegal demands on customers to pay some sums of money in order to receive healthcare.

The circumstance was borne out of the fact that there were gaps in the service providers’ tariffs for medicines on the market and those under the scheme that needed to be made up for.

It followed the inflationary trends the country has witnessed over the period causing the cost of medicines from suppliers to go up.

“So what we used to hear was that NHIA’s tariffs were low and that is how come they were asking our members to top up when they go to seek healthcare,” Mr Mensah told 3 Fm in an interview monitored by Angelonline.com.gh.

“So those kinds of events once the prices have gone up or our tariffs have gone up we believe that this should curb that situation where health care providers are asking members to do top-ups,” he added.

According to the officer, members should now be comfortable and feel free to access healthcare with NHIA Card without having to pay out of pocket.

Meanwhile, the NHIA has constituted committed at various levels to check such illicit acts on the part of the service providers across the regions.

“We have formed a co-payment committee at the national level, regional level and district levels to make sure that providers understand the need for us to take care of members without asking them to make any more financial commitment to the health care that we seek because of the activeness of the scheme.”