The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

Open letter to Mr Simon Townend and Dr Mark Britnell re NHI Impact Study

I have read your National Health Insurance (NHI) Impact Study and also your defence of same recently published in The Tribune.

I have no doubt that you exercised your full professional expertise in writing the study, and I reject any suggestion that you were influenced by any conflict of interest arising from your role as consultants to Government.

However, it cannot be denied that your conclusions are no better than long-term projections, no matter how carefully and independently drafted, and projections are subject to myriad unpredictable uncertainties - a point that you as auditors always emphasise in qualifying corporate projections of earnings.

To ordinary Bahamians, the greatest uncertainty is the questionable ability of our health authorities to execute the precise and far-reaching plans embodied in NHI. Our scepticism is based on evidence before our eyes or reliably reported to us. How many accounts have we read, or heard from actual witnesses, about the deficiencies of the grandiose Critical Care Block at Princess Margaret Hospital? - lack of air conditioning, operating rooms unavailable for use, unacceptable delays in patient treatment, continuing cost over-runs. Perhaps they are overstated, but the Public Hospitals Authority has never taken the trouble to refute them point-by-point.

I myself have for over two years observed the substantial Exuma Clinic sitting virtually unused because the essential staff have never been found to run it. The contractor informed me that he was paid some $14m of public funds to construct the handsome building, to date a wasted expenditure. I have been reliably told that a similar clinic has been built in Abaco and also sits unutilised.

Bahamians put more credence in present-day reality than in long-term possibilities. While your Impact Study is valuable as a guideline for objectives, you could do better service to citizens by producing a detailed forensic analysis of the foregoing health-care issues. Open and frank recognition of existing problems would eventually lead to wider acceptance of NHI by a still dubious public.

RICHARD COULSON

Nassau

February 5, 2017