The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Government’s chief medical officer yesterday moved to allay private sector fears by promising that the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme will “absolutely” be cost efficient.

While he and other officials provided no details, including how much NHI is projected to cost, and who will pay for it and how, Dr Delon Brennen said one objective was to reduce private sector healthcare and related insurance costs, which would ultimately spark increased business productivity.

Dr Brennen, who chairs the NHI steering committee, said that the scheme would speak to the Bahamas’ desire for a changed healthcare model.

“I think it absolutely will be cost effective. I think even when you look at it in other jurisdictions, one of the big things you do is provide for a healthier population,” Dr Brennen said.

“With a healthier population you have a more productive workforce, people who aren’t sick all the time and who you have to pay for, or they are out and you have to find someone to do their job.

“That person can be productive at work, their families are more healthy, so they don’t have to go off and care for them, and then you get to invest in other things,” he added.

“Some people provide health insurance for their employees. We are hoping to bring some of those costs down, and that will allow them to increase their productivity and the amount of people they are actually able to hire.

“You will see the development of their business model go up because they don’t have to count as much for the health of that grouping, because they know that that is already taken care of.”

It is unlikely, though, that many Bahamian businesses will share his optimism that NHI will reduce their health insurance costs.

This is especially since the private sector and their employees will likely have to share the burden of financing NHI, probably from increased National Insurance Board (NIB) contributions or a similar payment mechanism.

With Value-Added Tax (VAT), other tax/fee increases and the rising cost of doing business, many companies are likely to see NHI as a further burden that will impair their - and the overall economy’s - competitiveness.

The Government has announced it intends to implement NHI in January 2016. The programme has been proposed as a means of providing universal access to affordable healthcare for Bahamians.

Parliament passed an NHI Bill in the final months of the 2002-2007 Christie administration, but no regulations were ever finalised to enforce the legislation and bring it into effect.

“I definitely think we are moving in the right direction. If we are able to maintain the focus we have now, and there aren’t any hiccups on the way, our timeline is on board to really get things in place,” said Dr Brennen.

The Government has engaged Costa Rican healthcare consulting firm, Sanigest Internacional to come up with the cost for NHI.

The cost of implementing the scheme has not been determined, as Dr Brennen noted that the cost of the benefits package under NHI would be indicated in the firm’s final report. When initially introduced in the early 2000s, NHI was estimated to cost $235 million annually.

“What we are hoping is that the benefits package that we put out will speak to a lot of those community activities and home activities we speak about,” Dr Brennen said.

“It should speak to the changing model of care we want in our society. Then we talk about what the cost of the benefits package are. If you decide you’re going to do all of them, this is what the cost would be. The cost of the benefits package is what we would also get out of that final report.”

Dr Brennen added: “We’re pulling our stakeholders in, not just for general conversation any more but to put their input into those subcommittees and committees so that we can move the initiative forward.

“As we move toward the deadlines put in place, we need to ensure that we have activities in those areas. We want those people to be involved. We don’t want to shut out any part of the Bahamian population.

“We don’t want people to lose jobs. We want to ensure that we are inclusive, but inclusive to the point we can engage the Bahamian population as a whole, top to bottom, and offer them the access to care without them having to worry about how much money they have in their pocket.”