TIGblogs - Dennis Dames

Gov’t Committed To NHI:
By Candia Dames -
Nassau, Bahamas:

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham assured on Sunday that his administration is committed to "eventually" putting in place a system of National Health Insurance, but he said there are many things that would have to be done to get to that stage and gave no timeline for its full introduction.

"One day that will happen in The Bahamas," said Mr. Ingraham, when asked whether his government was committed to NHI.

"Unfortunately for The Bahamas my predecessors in office marketed a programme to the public and used the words ‘national health’, everybody is going to be covered’, without doing adequate work to cause that to happen. They were not prepared to produce that."

Prime Minister Ingraham spoke to reporters during his first "Meet the Press" event held at the British Colonial Hilton Hotel in downtown Nassau.

He said his government will move in a phased manner as it regards NHI, beginning with a National Drug Plan to provide free medications to needy Bahamians.

"We hope to produce that during the course of this year. We will then move to another phase, which may well include catastrophic illnesses or some additional things. I don’t know what they are, but they will be determined as a result of studies, but eventually we will arrive at that point," Mr. Ingraham said.

The prime minister said The Bahamas already has national health coverage on a sustained basis.

"There are few countries in the world that guarantees free hospital and outpatient care to all school-aged children, all civil servants, all indigent persons, all pensioners…The UBP did that in the 50s. It’s a question of the extent to which you can move these things forward and produce it. We inoculated every child in The Bahamas against childhood diseases," he said.

"We need to improve what we have. We need more money. We need better facilities and the rest of it and the monies can only come from a paying kind of fashion, but it’s easy to say ‘I’m going to give you national health’ and then don’t produce. Where is the national health going to come from? The same PMH is going to be there. The same clinics are going to be there, so I pay my money to the scheme and what are you going to give me? The same thing I had last week? We’re also going to begin by substantially improving PMH."

Mr. Ingraham said clearly The Bahamas needs a new hospital and will get one eventually.

He revealed that the government will seek parliamentary approval in "a couple weeks" for the Public Hospitals Authority to borrow $15 million to $20 million to upgrade many of its facilities until a new hospital could be built.

"We have outgrown the facilities we’ve got now…and so many things must be done in preparation for the eventual introduction of a National Health Insurance programme," the prime minister said.

"When you tie these things to an election and people hear these catchy phrases we all love it; there’s no one who’s opposed to it. We’d like to have national health insurance for everyone."

The Opposition has continued to accuse the FNM government of abandoning NHI, suggesting that "special interests" that helped to fund the FNM’s election campaign included interests that are opposed to NHI.

While NHI legislation was passed under the former administration, the accompanying regulations were never introduced.

Christie administration officials had revealed that the estimated annual cost of the scheme was $235 million annually.

4 February 2008