Following Auditor General Nancy Gathungu's recent revelation that the government spent Ksh104.8 billion on the Social Health Authority (SHA) system despite not owning it, President William Ruto has dismissed the claims.
Speaking on Tuesday during the burial ceremony of Malava MP Malulu Injendi, Ruto refuted the allegations, calling them falsehoods propagated by the media and social media users.
He firmly stated that the government had not spent a single cent on the system and assured that no such expenditure would be made in the future.
According to the Head of State, those opposed to the SHA system which has been facing backlash over the teething challenges it has been having are brokers who benefitted from the defunct National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF).
''This noise that you are hearing on social media and the newspaper is from people who were stealing from us during the times of NHIF. These are brokers. I even saw them recently claiming that the government would use Ksh100 billion on the system. Have they classified us as mad people?'' Ruto questioned.
''There is not a single cent from the government that will be used to pay for any system. Most of the money owned by the NHIF was being misappropriated by the brokers in the old NHIF system,'' he maintained.
Further, Ruto revealed that 40 per cent of the claims made to the defunct NHIF were fraudulent claims whose owners resorted to milking the government.
Meanwhile, the President asserted that the government would proceed with its decision to have a consortium of technology companies handle all the claims made to SHA.
According to him, the decision will enable the government to protect citizen contributions made to SHA.
''We said we are going to have a consortium of technology companies that is going to make sure that no fraudulent claims in SHA and they are going to make sure that the system is not going to be paid for by the government of Kenya,'' Ruto asserted.
''It is going to be a fee-for-service facility that will make sure that we protect citizen contribution. There will be no misuse of public money even if you feel those newspapers,'' he added.
This happened even as the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union(KMPDU) and the Union of Kenya Civil Servants (UKCS) called for a complete overhaul of the SHA management, failure to which they would commence an industrial action.
