This article discusses a new change and advancement to the medical system in Kenya. The medical system is run by the government who charges its citizens monthly for government healthcare or insurance. This new update was put in place by the current president William Ruto. He hopes that by putting this new system in place to achieve his campaign goal of “No Kenyan left behind” which includes making healthcare affordable to all. However the choice to use an AI model that determines how much a family can pay per month has seen some issues as the questionnaire that determines wealth is very broad and largely inaccurate, overestimating the wealth of the poorest Kenyans and up charging them for medical service and insurance.
This is very important for the country as this new system is working to benefit the citizens because it is an attempt to better the country and the medical system in the country. This in theory would be very beneficial as it could allow countries like Kenya to improve their medical system and if it worked a lot better then it would be able to get used in other countries in the Sub-Saharan region. Unfortunately like it’s been seen this system is largely ineffective and does not accurately organize the costs based on wealth. I think that if this were to be implemented in other countries it would have to be improved.
In terms of what the stakeholders this connects to should do, I think first the government should work to improve this system. The primary thing that should be done is to use a more numbers based model and not. This would work a lot better because the current system that is in place asks questions about the living conditions but that does not accurately represent how much wealth the family has and can afford to pay monthly. Estimates are that it overestimated the income in the country of the poorest citizens by 10-20% of what they could afford.
In terms of what concepts this connects to first is most definitely technology and development. First this is a great example of how countries in the region are able to use readily available technology in order to drive development much much more efficiently than they would trying to develop a system for the medicare that it would. In addition in drives development very fast because it improves infrastructure, in theory, which then gives more economic opportunities to the people.