The National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) is now demanding that patients who want their spouses covered produce proof of marriage before he or she can access the NHIF cover.
This new demand is expected to result in trouble for thousands of couple who live together without marriage certificates.
The new directive demands that for a spouse to be covered in the scheme, copies of the contributor’s identification card, the spouse’s ID, marriage certificate, or an affidavit to the marriage must be produced.
The affidavit must be from a lawyer’s office. The fund is seeking to tame cases of impersonation where contributors present relatives or strangers with medical problems as spouses.
The NHIF says the requirement was not entirely new as applicants have always been asked to produce such documents.
But it has now been made mandatory after it was discovered that some contributors included their girlfriends and mistresses as beneficiaries.
Chief Executive Officer Geoffrey Mwangi clarified that the documents are not needed during registration but only when one wants to make a change.
“This is just a measure to prevent possible fraud. We have had several cases of people presenting their relatives, especially those having medical problems, as their spouses,” Mr Mwangi said.
The demand for a marriage certificate or affidavit will ensure no one presents the wrong person as a spouse, he said.
“Kenyans are very clever people. They come up with ways of survival every day. We have to put in place tough measures to curb such situations,” he said.