Available figures show that since the NDC assumed office in 2009, the NHIS has been experiencing continuous and rapid decline in terms of its attractiveness and membership, as a results of poor management and policy direction.
The scheme has seen membership dropped by over one million subscribers under President Mahama from 2013 till date.
According to the 2009 National Health Insurance Authority report, there were 12,518,560 people registered on the scheme as at 2008, a figure which was more than 50% of the entire population of the country.
Again, in 2010, the annual NHIA report captured NHIS card holders to be just 8,163,714, a very sharp decline of about four million. And in the 2011, there was an insignificant jump of less than 50,000 to record 8.2 million members.
The NHIA’s own reports further showed another jump, but this time around, of about 600,000 in 2012, to 8,885,757. The scheme then recorded a significant growth in its membership from 8,885,757 to 10,145,196 in 2013.
Interestingly, there are no records of how the scheme is faring since the NHIA published the report on that huge jump in 2013, as there are no reports of 2014, 2015.
However, page 24 of a government document on Health Financing Strategy 2015 has revealed that NHIA coverage for 2015 was 35% of the population.
Ghana's population as captured by the Statistical Service stood at 27.9 million in 2015. This means going by the 35 percent quoted by the Health Financing Strategy 2015, the number of NHIS subscribers has drastically reduced, standing at some 9,765,000 members, an almost 3 million less than when President Kufuor left office in 2009.
These revelations have deflated the claim by the Mahama government that there are 11.2 million registered under the National Health Insurance Scheme in 2016.
The paper's checks across the country show that, apart from bad governance, huge political interference and propaganda, one major thing which actively contributed in obvious collapse of the scheme remain the Capitation Policy introduced in the Ashanti region in particularly in the early part of the NDC administration.
This infamous policy, largely seen as and described by Ghanaians as "killer policy", according to our checks, greatly reduced public trust in the scheme, as most people in the Ashanti region who are central in terms of membership lost interest in the scheme completely.
This vividly explains why the NDC, in spite of the propaganda and lies, has remained silent on the scheme in its Green Book as they failed to tout on any achievement in terms of enrolment, and rather speaks of OPD visits and claims.