Wamuzi News Ke
The transitional period from the now-defunct National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to the new Social Health Authority (SHA) has clearly divided the public according to their ideology and political inclinations, as a major national poll has just revealed.
The government has recommended the transition as a step towards universal health coverage, but the new evidence indicates that the political affiliation of a citizen is now the strongest predictor of their belief regarding the functional status of the new healthcare system.
The survey, conducted by TIFA Research, gives an in-depth account of the rollout of the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) and highlights a gap in perceptions, which, if not bridged, might delegitimize the healthcare transition.
The report states that the supporters of the present-day government are much more likely to report positive experiences with the services of SHA than those citizens who support the opposition parties or even those individuals who are politically unaligned.
This phenomenon points out that the healthcare issue in Kenya has passed the clinical aspect and has become a matter of political identity. The ruling government might take the data as a temporary relief, demonstrating that the “bottom-up” transformation has not lost its base, which still remains strongly loyal.
On the other hand, the policy analysts would consider the findings as a warning, revealing that a large number of Kenyans might be looking at the health system through a skeptical dark lens, resulting in low enrollment and resistance to the compulsory contributions.
The significance of these conclusions cannot be overstated since they come at a time when the Ministry of Health is facing huge difficulties in handling the situation created by the discharge points in hospitals, where these difficulties were mostly technical and the beneficiaries’ confusion was due to the transition.
The government insists the SHA is more extensive than TIFA, but the survey indicates the opposite: the vast majority of Kenyans who do not support the government’s current political arrangement are still not convinced, often judging the services as inferior or inaccessible.
The survey also addressed the issue of the wider economic worries connected with the 2.75 percent deduction from gross salaries that everybody has to bear.
Critics have always said that SHIF is an additional tax burden for the already overworked workforce. By presenting the data, the researchers have made the main issue more explicit, indicating that the financial pain caused by the deductions is the primary grievance even among those who are aware of the theoretical advantages of the SHA.
Such a situation is indeed very tricky for the public service delivery. If the national health care system is regarded as a political project rather than a public good for all, then the future of universal health coverage in Kenya will be at stake.
The report advises that the SHA may continue to be the cause of political unrest until the government can show, concretely and without bias, the improvements in hospital outcomes that have resulted from the healthcare reforms.
The healthcare ratings accompanying the 2027 election process have started to become more than simply a hospital efficiency measure—they are indeed becoming a gauge for the government’s overall trustworthiness.
Despite the fact that the majority of people in the country are still dealing with the high cost of living, the “SHA experiment” is being viewed as the ultimate challenge to see if the wide-ranging government can really keep its closest-to-heart promise: the nation’s welfare.
Although the Ministry of Health has not yet issued an official counterargument to the TIFA findings, the statistics are likely to spark a strong debate in Parliament as legislators return to assess the health transition progress.
At the moment, the “Kenyan Reality” still depicts two nations: one that envisions a digital health revolution and another that perceives a government-created disaster of slow-moving processes and political maneuvering.
