The Tribune

By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

Tribune Staff Reporter

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Prime Minister Hubert Minnis on Wednesday said the low cost that Bahamians pay for public healthcare is unsustainable and warned that partisan politics have long made honest reform impossible, calling for a bipartisan approach to confronting the reality that healthcare cannot remain free.

Speaking in the House of Assembly, Dr Minnis suggested that both major parties understand that public healthcare must be paid for, but fear of backlash while in power has stalled reform and left the system under strain.

His comments came after Health Minister Michael Darville endorsed public warnings from Consultant Physicians Staff Association president Charelle Lockhart that rising demand has made free healthcare unsustainable.

“Reality is health care is an expensive business, and she made a valid point that Bahamians will have to come to the realisation one day that it can’t be free,” Dr Darville said.

“They are demanding more, and as you demand more, the demand on the public purse increases, and there's only so much resources you have,” he said, pointing to National Health Insurance as the long-term financing solution.

Dr Minnis then seized on that admission, warning that reform collapses when parties take turns disowning policies they privately accept.

“Minister, you made a very important statement, and you said that health care cannot be free, and that is why I said that health education and security must be beyond politics,” he said.

“You know it cannot be free. I know it cannot be free, right? But if we make it political, when you say people have to pay, and then I'm in opposition, oh no, no, no, people do not need to pay, the healthcare system cannot advance. We have to work together.”

However, he said Bahamians should not be asked to contribute financially without confidence that funds are properly managed.

“Don't ask me to pay when my money go through a safe and disappear,” he said. “I want accountability. I want every set to be accounted and I don't want to pay and 90 percent of what I pay go for employment that will not correct the system.”

The exchange revives a debate that shadowed Dr Minnis’s own administration, when officials acknowledged that public healthcare could not be sustained without greater patient contributions, even as proposed changes stalled.

In 2018 and 2019, then Health Minister Dr Duane Sands said the government would struggle to meet healthcare costs if most users continued paying nothing, noting that about 87 percent of public hospital patients were not contributing through fees.

He later forecast “increased collection of gazetted fees” to meet demand, insisting the destitute would not be denied care but arguing that those who can pay should do so because the fees are legally mandated. Those proposals were never fully implemented.