VCs are financing a servant economy
These are landmarks in pension history because they attempted for the first time to establish a comprehensive and uniform scheme for all whom we may now call civil servants. Even before the 19th century, the problem of providing for public servants who are unable, through old age or incapacity, to continue working, has been recognised, but methods of dealing with the problem varied from society to society and even occasionally from department to department. Pensioner is not suggested as a criterion for classification as that would lead to an absurd result, because in that event every pensioner relevant to his date of retirement will form a class unto himself. What is suggested is that when a pension scheme undergoes a revision and is enforced effective form a certain date, the date so specified becomes a sort of a Rubicon and those who retire prior to that date form one class and those who retire on a subsequent date form a distinct and separate class and no one can cross the Rubicon.
Further, insurance is a risk transfer mechanism in which the insured makes small periodic payments called premiums to another , in return for the payment of benefit packages on the occurrence of a specified event.5 Therefore, health insurance involves the pooling of health risks and funds. The National Health Insurance Scheme in Nigeria was designed to provide minimum economic security to workers with regards to unfavourable losses resulting from accidental injury, sickness, old age, unemployment, etc. It is based on a pre-payment system where both the employer and employee make contributions to the scheme and the employee accesses the scheme whenever he/she is ill.5 The scheme was officially launched on June 6, 2005, and services to enrolees started later in 2005.
In the meantime, we as consumers need to make the conscious choice to avoid supporting the servant economy whenever possible. We can decide against fulfilling the absurd market projections VCs base much of their excitement on. Most nights the bell rings and the sound of a bulky backpack rubbing against the wall betrays our visitor — food delivery is here.
In this study, the majority of the respondents agreed that joining the scheme will benefit them and this perception significantly influenced the decision to enroll in the NHIS. Other respondents also believe that the scheme offered some form of financial protection in terms of their health care expenditure and this influenced their decision to enroll in the scheme. These included the cumbersome process for the collection of NHIS cards. These issues regarding the technical processes have also rendered the scheme unattractive to some people as stated earlier in this discussion. The price of insurance is another factor influencing the demand for health insurance.
There is no question of fresh commutation of pension of the pensioners who retired prior to 31st March, 1979 and have already availed of the benefit of commutation. It is not open to them to get that benefit at this late date because commutation has to be availed of within specified time limit from the date of actual red shoes outfit men retirement. To say that by our approach we are restructuring the liberalised pension scheme, is to ignore the constitutional mandate. Similarly, the court is not conferring benefits by this approach, the court only removes the illegitimate classification and after its removal the law takes its own course.