Ranford Patterson ignoring the facts

Fri, Nov 20th 2015, 09:50 PM

Dear Editor,

Bahamas Christian Council head Ranford Patterson's opposition to the implementation of a tax to fund NHI on the grounds that the taxpayer cannot handle any more burden completely ignores the facts as they are at present. At present, Bahamians typically pay upward of five percent of their income on health insurance. Many pay tens of thousands annually. Lower income and uninsured people typically pay far more in the end, often being wiped out by health events and having to resort to cookouts and appeals to friends and relatives. All of this is both a drain on disposable income in the Bahamas and a source of massive inequity.

Even more reprehensible, I am reliably informed that many thousands of Bahamian wage-earners (typically government employees) lose as much as 80 percent of their income to salary deductions for furniture, cars, wide-screen televisions and the ever-proliferating number of unscrupulous pay-day consumer lenders in this country. And yet I have seldom, if ever, seen the Christian Council register a complaint. Nor has it provoked anything like the media's driven and obsessive campaign to 'defend' the downtrodden masses from the unbearable pain of a universally spread savings scheme for the healthcare that we will all predictably need one day.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

- Andrew Allen

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