The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

AFTER discounting the tax contributions of Bahamians and describing standard universal healthcare benefits as being “free”, Health Minister Duane Sands now says that Bahamians simply cannot afford the “burden” of taxes needed to maintain NHI spending levels.

Firstly, to describe taxes for healthcare as a “burden” is incorrect. Spending on health is not discretionary. We all spend a significant portion of our income on healthcare, whether it is paid in taxes or to the private sector.

At present, Bahamians spend more than practically anyone in our region on our healthcare, with a large part of that spending going to profits of healthcare professionals and insurers, inside and outside the country. For a government to tax the population to an extent that does not exceed that spending would, by definition, not be increasing the burden on the population. It would be decreasing the burden.

And Minister Sands’ argument for his drastic cuts to spending on NHI is further enfeebled by other, discretionary choices on spending and revenue his government has already made. They cannot afford to maintain the PLP’s level of spending on universal healthcare, yet can afford to give up revenues on salmon, shrimp and industrial washing machines? At the very least this is (to use a term from Hubert Ingraham’s lexicon) “bad optics”. I would suggest it is also bad values.

ANDREW ALLEN

Nassau,

July 20, 2017.