NHIF To Cover Major Surgeries – Sign Up If You Haven’t!

The National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) yesterday announced additional benefits for its members. They will now cover specialized, major and minor surgeries to the extent of 500,000, 130,000 and 40,000 shillings respectively.

This development comes soon after they announced that they will be covering dialysis and cancer treatments, and also reviewed inpatient coverage in the major private hospitals from 1,900 shillings to 6,000 shillings a night.

Medical insurance is a personal finance decision. Medical care is very expensive and it is often said, truthfully so, that most of us are a medical emergency away from total poverty.

I am a living example of this. A few years back, I was in an incident which resulted to hospitalization, a number of surgeries and months in recovery. Shockingly, within the first 4 days of hospitalization and one surgery, I had racked up a hospital bill over 500,000 shillings, which was 50% of the accident portion of my medical cover. If I didn’t have cover at that point, my choices would have been to sell an asset, or have a fundraiser.  When you’re recovering, the last thing you need is to start worrying about how you will pay for your meds, and which procedures are totally necessary and which ones you can skip to save costs.

You cannot predict these things. At the very basic, pay your NHIF dues. If you are not formally employed, it is only 500 shillings a month.  Then if you can, get a basic inpatient insurance coverfor about 20,000 shillings in premiums. That is about 2,000 shillings as a risk management cost every month.

This is wise risk management on your part. Personal finance is about making money, managing it well, investing it, and protecting your investments from loss. Medical cover protects you from losing your money.