NHI debate rages on: 'A compromise has become absolutely necessary'

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is calling for an end to court battles fighting the National Health Insurance (NHI).

RELATED: Godongwana wants legal challenges to NHI to be settled out of court

Human rights and social justice activist Mark Heywood says poverty is a major factor when it comes to access to proper healthcare in South Africa.

"Eighty percent of the population are dependent on the public healthcare sector, and those people have to make best use of what the public health sector can afford.

"We are a country where we have universal access to healthcare services. Nobody gets turned away because they have no money – but, there's a vast difference in the type of quality of care... whether you get medicines, whether you get an operation, whether you get chemotherapy or radiation therapy if you have cancer."

Heywood says he's not ideologically opposed to the NHI Act, but he believes that public and private health needs to work more effectively together.

"Although many people believe that they get better care in the private healthcare sector, that is not a rule – you can get better care in the public healthcare sector.

"A compromise is possible, and a compromise has become absolutely necessary... if we allow this litigation to continue for another three years as it winds its way through Constitutional Court, all we're going to be at the end of it is more divided, more distrustful, more distracted from focusing on the real issues in the healthcare system... and there will be no winners.

"People desire a compromise, people wish to find a way out of this cul-de-sac which we are now in – this destructive cul-de-sac... and if a way could be found, there is a will to get there."

To listen to Mark Heywood in conversation with CapeTalk’s John Maytham, click the audio below: