BUDGET 2025/26 POSTPONEMENT

• The Presidency issued a media statement among other things referring to ‘disagreement but also collegial and mature consensus within Cabinet’ on unspecified matters.
• National Treasury issued a media statement announcing that the Budget speech will now be delivered on 12 March 2025.

 

HEALTH INSURANCE

• The Department of Health gazetted a notice calling for public comments on a Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) report assessing ‘low-cost benefit’ option guidelines and recommendations compiled by the medical schemes and insurance industry. Input is also sought on concerns raised by Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.
• According to the CMS report’s executive summary, the industry’s proposals sought to:
  • provide low-income households with a mechanism for accessing affordable, quality healthcare services (among other things by ‘diminishing the extent of out-of-pocket payments’), and
  • ‘secure the long-term sustainability of public health resources’.

• The CMS report also seeks to address ‘two pivotal questions’:

• whether it is the role of medical schemes to provide low-cost benefit options, and
• ‘the fate of insurance companies currently offering primary health insurance products under the demarcation exemption framework’.

• Against that backdrop, the CMS report:

• ‘advocates against the introduction of a low-income earners option’, and
• ‘proposes a phased discontinuation of … currently exempted products’.

• Having considered the CMS report, the Minister is concerned that:

• the benefits being proposed by the industry are ‘less than the … benefits package …(already) offered at no charge by the public healthcare system’
• the industry’s proposals ‘are not supported by any research linked to the specific sector of the population’ to whom a low-cost benefits option would be available
• the low-cost benefits option appears to be more about maintaining the prevailing ‘exorbitant pricing structure’ than ‘higher levels of efficiency and lower profit margins for private healthcare providers and administrators’
• more details are needed on the services to be offered by a low-cost benefits option and in what quantity, and
• it is not clear how the industry’s proposals would be aligned with the National Health (NHI) Insurance Act and NHI policy.

• In the Minister’s view, it would be more ‘appropriate’ to implement recommendations in the Competition Commission’s 2018 health market inquiry report (executive summary) regarding:

• the creation of a ‘multilateral price negotiation forum, and
• amendments to the 1998 Medical Schemes Act.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

• The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment called for public comments on draft regulations intended to reduce the impact of offshore bunkering on marine biodiversity. This is noting that the proposed new regulations define ‘offshore bunkering’ as supplying fuel to a vessel at sea ‘outside an operational harbour area that has been physically modified from its original natural state’. Such operations may entail transferring oil, petroleum products, liquified petroleum gas or liquified natural gas from one vessel to another at sea.
• Developed under the 2008 National Environmental Management: Integrated Coastal Management Act, among other things the draft regulations seek to:

• prohibit offshore bunkering:

• in marine protected and critical biodiversity areas
• within five nautical miles of their boundaries, and
• within five nautical miles of aquaculture development zones and high-water marks

• prescribe the conditions to be met and responsibilities undertaken by bunker operators in permissible offshore bunkering areas, and
• mitigate underwater noise and oil spills.

 

CONSERVATION

• The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment called for public comments on proposals under the 2003 National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act for extending the following protected areas:

• Mountain Zebra National Park (Eastern Cape) (Government Gazette notice)
• Tankwa Karoo National Park (Western Cape) (Government Gazette notice)
• Tankwa Karoo National Park (Northern Cape) (Government Gazette notice), and
• Namaqua National Park (Northern Cape) (Government Gazette notice).

 

Prepared by Pam Saxby