The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Kindly publish this open letter to Health Minister Dr Perry Gomez.

Dear Dr Gomez,

You are correct. Lots of young black men are dying, but it’s not because of the absence of national health insurance.

They’re dying on a weekly, sometimes daily basis, because your government has failed to live up to its promise to stop violent crime.

So they’re dying – young, black, white, poor, and not so poor. Their blood is running through the streets our children cannot safely play on.

And they’re costing hard working law-abiding citizens – black and white, rich and poor and in between – inordinate sums of money in trauma care at PMH, in police cars and surveillance equipment and technology, in burglar bars and so on.

Your government plans to add VAT on private health insurance in July, which will put even further pressure on the woefully inadequate public health care system as people are squeezed out of their already extremely costly private plans.

Your health care system cannot cope with the current pressure. Imagine what will happen come July. More people will probably die.

And you’re proposing a payroll tax of 5.8 per cent to fund this National Health Insurance scheme after many millions of our dollars were squandered on the ill-fated, untendered, unplanned, uninsured BAMSI project where one building has already gone up in smoke.

(Initiated because the price of limes went up during a brief seasonal shortage)!

Not only are poor black men dying from the out of control crime problem your government had all the answers to, but our institutions also have virtually died.

Our educational institution was dumbed down and lies kicked to the knees and gasping for breath, dooming thousands of illiterate, unemployable students to poverty or a career in crime.

The prison rehabilitation system died and so is releasing murderous animals back into society. Law and order and justice have died. Our judicial system is struggling and, many will argue, dying.

Witnesses are scared to testify because they are being murdered. So they are dying.

The transparent tendering process has died.

Even our Junkanoo culture is being perverted and, many fear, will die.

Our economy is dying and if you saddle the Bahamian people with any more taxes, it too will die.

It’s clear this government is completely out of its depth.

It’s time to be put out to pasture, perhaps in the fields of BAMSI where they can grow limes and chase delusions of grandeur before any more damage is inflicted on our country.

ATHENA DAMIANOS

PS While Dr Gomez can’t say what NHI will cost, Colina Financial has projected a cost of $500 million to $750 million, which is nearly half the country’s recurrent expenditure!