The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

FREE National Movement Leader Dr Hubert Minnis has accused Prime Minister Perry Christie of being “completely out of touch” with the plight of Bahamians who struggle to make ends meet.

Dr Minnis spoke to The Tribune a day after Mr Christie said he was amazed at the discourse surrounding the government’s proposed implementation of National Health Insurance. The Christie administration plans to roll out the initiative in January 2016.

Mr Christie denied that the government had already decided to introduce additional taxes to fund the universal health care scheme.

This led Dr Minnis yesterday to ask whether the prime minister really lived in The Bahamas.

“Where has he been living? We are living in a country where people are being taxed to the max,” Dr Minnis said. “This is The Bahamas where 43,000 people are earning $11 a day or less. Is the prime minister not aware of this? Does he not know that the middle class is suffering because of the value added tax his government implemented?

“Mr Christie needs (to) only go into the super markets and listen to what the people are saying or speak to bank executives and ask them why since January of this year they are charging clients $2 per month if their accounts don’t have $500 on it - yet another tax that crept up on people. This prime minister is definitely not aligned with the feelings and struggles of the people.”

The Killarney MP urged the government to focus on growing the economy, creating employment and improving the wastage in the health care system.

Yesterday, Branville McCartney, Democratic National Alliance leader, added that his party had no confidence that the government could successfully implement NHI.

In a press statement, he said backlash sparked by NHI raised a number of important questions.

He said: “For example, who if anyone, will be responsible for overseeing the initiative to ensure that fraudulent claims or general malfeasance does not occur?

“So far, the government’s track record for warding off corruption has been dismal. We have seen when it comes to money, the PLP has a problem. Even as they plan the transformation of public health care, Bahamians are still in the dark about the (reported) missing millions at the pharmacy at PMH.”

Mr McCartney was referring to concerns raised about drug inventory in an auditor’s report into the Public Hospital’s Authority.

“Another key question to be answered is what role, if any, will private health care insurance providers have in the implementation of this new initiative and what affect will it have on that industry? Perhaps the most important question to be asked though, is how the government will fund NHI? If additional taxes are to be introduced, who will be responsible for ensuring that the collected tax are in fact used for the intended purpose?”

He said so far it was disappointing that no one in the government adequately provides answers of how NHI is expected to operate.

“No one, not even the minister responsible has been able to provide satisfactory answers to these very important questions. Instead Dr (Perry) Gomez’s taxes are ‘better than death’ position has left a sour taste in the mouths (of Bahamians).”

On Wednesday, Mr Christie explained that the government had not made any concrete decisions on NHI, including how it would pay for it, because consultants were still giving officials advice on how to develop the universal health care scheme.

However, he told reporters that at all times the government reserves the right to determine how NHI is rolled out, which would determine any new tax rate to come.