The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government’s assertion that just 30 per cent of Bahamians are covered by private health insurance was yesterday challenged using data from another government agency, which pegged the ‘insured’ level at closer to 50 per cent.

Insurance industry contacts supplied Tribune Business with data from the last national census conducted by the Department of Statistics, which showed that around 47 per cent of Bahamians possessed some form of private medical coverage.

“According to the Department of Statistics, and as shown in the table, approximately 47 per cent of Bahamians have health insurance,” one insurance executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Tribune Business.

“The Department of Statistics is the main entity and government agency responsible for providing information on matters of this nature. Hence, it is unclear how the NHI Secretariat has determined its figures – which are significantly understated/overstated.”

The Department of Statistics data showed that 21 per cent of Bahamians had individual health insurance policies, while another 23 per cent were covered by employer-sponsored group plans. A further 3 per cent possessed both individual and group coverage.

Based on these statistics, some 53 per cent of Bahamians lacked health insurance when the Department of Statistics last undertook its census - a significant number, but a major deviation from the 70 per cent figure cited by the NHI Secretariat and implementation team.

“I really don’t know where that’s coming from,” one insurance industry source said of the 70 per cent figure. “And that’s the problem.”

Another, also speaking on condition of anonymity, added: “They’re playing with the numbers.”

They suggested that in asserting the ‘70 per cent’ figure, the Government was excluding all the civil servants and government agencies who had insurance plans administered by the private sector, even though the risk lay with the administration.

Adding in these public sector workers to the 30 per cent cited by the Government as having private health insurance takes the figure closer to that cited in the Department of Statistics survey, the source added.

This was alluded to by the Government’s own consultants, Sanigest Internacional, in their 2014 NHI report, which found that more than 12,000 government employees, and over 10,000 of their dependents, were covered by some form of private health insurance plan.

Total premiums amounted to almost $70 million, and Sanigest also acknowledged that the relatively high level of private insurance penetration in the Bahamas was unique among nations seeking to implement an NHI scheme.