NAIROBI, Kenya Aug 26 – In Kenya’s hospitals, patients are dying not because medicine does not exist, but because powerful cartels have stolen the money meant to buy it.From the old National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to the new Social Health Authority (SHA), billions of shillings meant for drugs, beds and life-saving treatment have instead been pocketed through ghost hospitals, fake claims and inflated bills.The scandals are staggering. NHIF is believed to have lost over Sh50 billion to fraud, ghost patients and shady deals before it was dissolved in 2024. Barely a year later, the brand-new SHA has already rejected Sh10.6 billion worth of fraudulent claims.But behind every statistic is a real human story, a mother giving birth on a hospital floor because there are no beds, a cancer patient turned away because drugs are “out of stock,” a family selling their land to pay for dialysis that should have been covered.For decades, Kenya’s health insurance has not been about protecting patients. It has been about enriching fraudsters.When President William Ruto launched SHA and TaifaCare in October 2024, it was sold as the biggest health reform in Kenya’s history. The NHIF, stained by decades of corruption, was finally dead. A fresh start had arrived.But within just six months, SHA was already embroiled in the same old scandals.In March 2025, questions were raised after billions were paid to little-known clinics, some of which hardly exist. Investigators uncovered ghost facilities, fake patient files and “upcoding” where hospitals billed for expensive treatments that never happened.By August 2025, Health CS Aden Duale admitted the rot was massive. “We will not allow fraudsters to feast on taxpayers’ money,” he said. “So far, we have suspended 40 hospitals, blacklisted 12 doctors and stopped more than Sh10 billion in fraudulent claims.”Yet the anger among Kenyans is growing. If a “hospital in a phone” could get Sh10 million in payouts, what hope is there for ordinary patients struggling in rural dispensaries with no medicine?The tragedy is that every shilling stolen by cartels means one less drug, one less doctor, one more death.NHIF’s scandals left public hospitals drowning in debt, with patients forced to dig into their pockets or die quietly at home. SHA promised to end this nightmare but today, some hospitals are once again running out of drugs because claims have not been paid.Critics say Duale’s crackdowns look good on TV but do little to fix the deeper problem: a system where corruption is not an accident, but a business model.Opposition leaders compare SHA to “NHIF reloaded” a shiny new name with the same dirty hands inside it.Even the Auditor General has warned that the government does not even own the Sh104 billion IT system running SHA, despite spending billions on it.Lost in the noise of suspensions, billions and press conferences is the ordinary Kenyan patients whose lives are cut short because Kenya’s health insurance system has become a feeding trough for the greedy.Kenya’s health system has been “reformed” for 60 years. NHIF was created in 1966, expanded in 1998, and finally buried in 2024. Now SHA and TaifaCare are here, mandatory for every adult, promising universal health coverage.If billions vanished under NHIF and billions more are already lost under SHA in less than a year, Kenyans are left wondering: can this country ever build a health system for patients, or are they doomed to remain sacrificial lambs in a system built for thieves? For now, the cartels eat and Kenyans die.