In the two cases already filed by the Board of Healthcare Funders and trade union Solidarity, it is important to note who is being sued in each case.
The controversial National Health Insurance Act, which was signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa two weeks before the elections, and now faces several legal challenges, was the subject of much discussion at the Healthcare Funders' Association symposium on Wednesday.
There are already six legal challenges in the works from the trade union Solidarity, the Health Funders' Association, the South African Medical Association, the Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF), the South African Health Professionals Collaboration and the Democratic Alliance.
However, Elsabe Klinck, managing director at Elsabe Klinck and Associates, said she anticipates that as more cases are filed, they will be consolidated.
"That might delay things in the beginning, because you'll have more sets of advocates that will need to coordinate their diaries and so on, but then we can have a single ruling," Klinck said, adding that one of the positive, unintended spin-offs of the NHI debacle has been the resulting unity from the private healthcare sector.
"A lot of the legal practitioners that would normally fiercely compete for your business are all now on the same page and we would encourage sharing (of information)," she told delegates.
'Highly unrealistic' costing
One of the bugbears at the...
