The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

There is growing concern of a threat to transform the entire health care system in The Bahamas into a fully government controlled and managed system. The Sanigest team from Costa Rica who was hired by the government to deliver NHI to the Bahamas plans to lay down the foundation for the eradication of the private health care sector. They will deny this fact but when the BIA analysed the proposed NHI plan it was clear that the demise of the private health sector will be the endpoint. In response, the government and Sanigest were repeatedly asked to focus only on the uninsured and leave the individuals with private insurance alone but they insist on forcing NHI down everyone’s throat.

Union members of the armed forces and customs are also very worried that Mr Christie and his government are planning to withdraw their Colina insurance and replace it with NHI which will be inferior by comparison eg. NHI will virtually abolish to travel abroad to the US for medical care and would only support the use of Generic (non Brand medications). It appears that the view of the Christie led administration is that private Colina Insurance is ‘too good for these Government workers.”

As union members begin to become outraged, the Christie government will do everything in its power to persuade union leaders into appeasing union members on this matter especially now as election season approaches, but this will prove increasingly difficult as the union members become more aware of the threat that lies ahead. The government may even pretend to downplay their NHI plans in order to prevent a disastrous election uproar.

Mr Christie has had many failures and has issued numerous empty promises in the past five years (crime, mortgage relief, Baha Mar, unemployment, BOB, Bamsi and the list goes on). The Bahamian people have lost both trust and confidence in him and they are not inclined to buy anymore gold rush promises that so easily rolls off his tongue.

There is also the observation that the NHI concept cannot be successful if there is insufficient local capacity to deliver high quality health care. The private sector based on private insurance compensation has been able to create and successfully run health care facilities which are comparable in many instances to US facilities in terms of standards of excellence and customer service. The public sector on the other hand falters in its delivery of excellent health care standards and above all customer service. The Minister of Health, Dr Perry Gomez, himself stated that an individual is five times more likely to die at PMH as compared to Doctors Hospital. If this is indeed the case, then the first priority must be to improve the public system because the private sector simply does not have the capacity to absorb the entire country’s health needs. The public service improvement must precede, not follow NHI.

It is also puzzling that Mr Christie claims to be interested in increasing health care access yet he imposes Vat on all health related services which achieves the very opposite making health care more expensive and less accessible to hard working Bahamians.

We all know that Mr Christie understands what it means to support an idea all the way. The most obvious example was his unwavering support for the gambling or numbers rackets in which case he rejects the will of the people in the referendum, legalises the industry and goes even further to make gambling Vat exempt. So is Mr Christie really genuine about health care access or is he more interested in total government control of every health care dollar in the country?

Mr Christie knows quite well that this pursuit of such overwhelming government control will only serve to deliver inferior government managed health care while increasing the national debt. In the end who will pay the bill? None other than the hard working people of this country through taxation.

This government continues to offend and deceive and make empty promises as long as we allow them to do so. As Bahamians we must continue to educate ourselves and hold the feet of our leaders to the hot coals and let them know that “Mamma ain’t raise no fool”.

CONCERNED CITIZEN

Nassau,

September 22, 2015.