The private insurance industry continues to pound away at the Christie administration over an alleged lack of transparency in the planning of the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme. Now the Bahamas Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) has waded into the fray, charging that, "as proposed, NHI promises to decimate the private health insurance sector and render a number of members of BIBA jobless beginning in January."
In addition, the president of that organization told Guardian Business that the scheme "appears to be a political agenda, and not a people agenda".
BIBA President Felicia Antoinette Knowles has accused the government of ignoring the private sector, warning that this "is not a politically or economically smart thing to do". She noted -- as has been reported by Guardian Business -- that the BIA wrote to the government twice last year offering input on how the insurance industry can contribute in a substantive way to the discussion on healthcare reform. However, she said, there has been no formal response to these approaches from anyone in the government.
Knowles said there is, as yet, no clear indication of how NHI will be delivered, and demanded that the government be transparent and inclusive to avoid unnecessary and undesirable economic disruption. This demand for transparency comes while reports are circulating that the administration has disbanded consultative committees on NHI including the committee dealing with health system strengthening and replaced them all with a single committee supposedly called the NHI Elite Committee.
The BIBA president also attacked the Sanigest report, charging that the report "has many gaps and data flaws in terms of benefits, financing, infrastructure and economic impact." She also said the Costa Rican consultants ignored the contribution of private health insurance in The Bahamas, and seemed to conclude that the private sector is dispensable and should be eliminated as part of the implementation of NHI. She said this would put The Bahamas' health system, insurance industry and "economy as a whole in a very precarious position."
"It is certainly not clear that NHI, as presently envisioned, can be sustainable or manageable. And there has to be buy-in from all stakeholders, including insurers, intermediaries, the business community and the Bahamian people," Knowles argued.
The BIBA issued a press statement yesterday noting that since the government's proposals for NHI as contained in the 400-page report Sanigest was leaked last year, Health Minister Perry Gomez has continued to insist that the scheme will be implemented in January 2016. The BIBA says, however, that "there has been no consultation so far with either the private medical or insurance sector."
"We fully endorse the position paper issued by the Bahamas Insurance Association recently. As the voice and conscience of the consumer within the local insurance market, we are echoing the same sentiments expressed by the BIA. It is not only imperative that our government meets with the private health insurance industry, it would be illogical not to do so," Knowles said.
"As companies that have provided and facilitated health insurance in The Bahamas for decades, our concerns and expertise should be factored into the proposals for national health insurance," she said. "That is what any responsible government would seek to do in order to formulate good public policy."
"(The government's silence, and apparent refusal to include the private sector) makes no sense at all. We are Bahamians, Bahamian professionals and Bahamian companies, and we expect to be included in any discussions that are intended to transform our economy in such a major way," she said.
Major insurers like Colina, Atlantic Medical, British-American Financial and Generali currently provide health coverage to more than half the Bahamian population.
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