The 2019 report of Health Market Inquiry shows that South Africa's private healthcare overservices its clients, offers variable patient experiences, and varying quality of care. This inquiry goes on to call for regulatory reforms to enhance efficiency, competitiveness, affordability and service quality.

South Africa is a country in which fewer than 16% of South Africans have private medical insurance, and where, 30 years after the end of apartheid, nearly three quarters who do are white. Approximately 50% of the country's entire health spend serves this tiny margin of private sector users.

Despite this, the public health sector with the other 50% of health expenditure has been able to ensure that 70% of the population has access to Universal Health Care services that include reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, and prevention/care around infectious diseases and noncommunicable diseases. Has this care been as quick and as excellent as we'd all like? No. But neither has care in the private sector. The 2019 report of Health Market Inquiry shows that South Africa's private healthcare overservices its clients, offers variable patient experiences, and varying quality of care. This inquiry goes on to call for regulatory reforms to enhance efficiency, competitiveness, affordability and service quality.

It is with this context in mind that just before the recent elections, the then-majority ANC government passed the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act. Judging by...