Health insurance can curb sudden deaths – HMO boss

Managing Director of Ultimate Health Management Services, Lekan Ewenla

Nigeria’s health insurance system should be used not only to pay medical bills when people fall ill but to change the country’s tendency to seek care only after health problems have become serious, the Managing Director of Ultimate Health Management Services, Lekan Ewenla, has said.

Ewenla linked the preventive side of health insurance to the need to reduce sudden deaths, arguing that regular access to healthcare and greater awareness of personal health status could help Nigerians identify and manage illnesses before they become emergencies.

He made the argument in an interview with journalists in Lagos on Tuesday, while urging Nigerians to move away from the widespread reliance on out-of-pocket healthcare payments.

“As a matter of fact, the concept of health insurance was, first of all, to change the health-seeking behaviour of Nigerians,” Ewenla said.

His position places the debate over health insurance beyond the question of who pays hospital bills, suggesting that the success of the system should also be measured by whether it changes how Nigerians interact with healthcare providers.

Ewenla said Nigerians should not wait until they are visibly ill before seeking medical attention or discovering their health status.

The health maintenance organisation boss argued that health insurance was deliberately structured to cover preventive as well as curative services and could therefore provide a framework for people to maintain regular contact with healthcare providers.

His comments come as the Federal Government moves to enforce mandatory health insurance enrolment, with a September 4, 2025, circular from the Secretary to the Government of the Federation introducing sanctions for non-compliance.

Ewenla said the enforcement policy made public education particularly important, warning that Nigerians needed to understand both the benefits of enrolment and the consequences of failing to comply.

“It is important to educate the populace about the inherent benefits and the implications of non-compliance with the law,” he said.

He called on the National Health Insurance Authority to intensify its public enlightenment efforts, arguing that the agency needed to make the benefits of health insurance sufficiently familiar to Nigerians.

Rather than treating insurance as a product people turn to only when they require treatment, Ewenla said the system should encourage a different relationship with healthcare.

“Health insurance is designed to change the narrative of our poor health indices through regular interactive sessions and sensitisation of the enrollees by the health maintenance organisations that are statutorily saddled with the responsibility of driving enrolment and managing their access to quality health care services,” he said.

He added that the system was intended to make Nigerians more conscious of their well-being and encourage them to pay attention to their health before the emergence of serious conditions.

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“Health insurance is designed to let our people appreciate the importance of paying premium attention to their well-being,” Ewenla said.

Ewenla argued that the country’s continued dependence on direct payment for medical treatment placed households at unnecessary financial and health risk, particularly when illness occurred unexpectedly.

He therefore urged Nigerians to take advantage of the legal and policy framework established by the National Health Insurance Authority Act 2022 and the Federal Government’s 2025 directive.

“We need to migrate completely from paying out of pocket for medical services. It is no longer in vogue. It is no longer trending. People should enrol in the health insurance programme to have unhindered access to qualitative and affordable health care services all year round,” he said.

As part of efforts to extend coverage beyond formal employment, Ewenla disclosed that Ultimate Health HMO had adopted the benefit package of the public sector social health insurance programme for the informal sector.

The company, he said, was seeking to make the package available to informal-sector operators, including small and medium-sized business owners across the country.

He described the package as comprehensive and said its affordability was one of the factors that could make it suitable for wider enrolment.

“It is important to mention that the benefit package is robust, well understood by the NHIA-accredited network of health care facilities across the country and above all, the premium is very affordable,” he said.

Ewenla also connected the health insurance debate to the large sums of money Nigerians abroad send to relatives in the country for healthcare and other needs.

He disclosed that Ultimate Health HMO recently travelled to the United Kingdom to relaunch its health insurance programme among Nigerians living there, with the aim of encouraging them to enrol dependants, family members and business associates in Nigeria.

According to him, diaspora Nigerians already provide significant financial support for relatives seeking healthcare in Nigeria, but much of the money is spent when illness has already occurred.

“We have it on good authority that remittances from the diaspora back home every month are presently over $1bn per month and a reasonable fraction of these funds—these informal funds—are sent to individuals to access care,” he said.

Ewenla said the company was seeking to channel part of that spending towards organised health insurance coverage, which he argued could give families more predictable access to healthcare instead of relying on emergency financial support whenever illness strikes.