By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Medical Association of The Bahamas president Dr Sy Pierre yesterday reiterated calls for a sustainable national health insurance funded universal healthcare system, stressing that we must make “maximum use” of the country’s current healthcare infrastructure.

“We want universal healthcare. We have that now but is poorly managed. I think the great benefit of a national health insurance plan is that it will allow some of the private entities to take some of the burden off of the public,” said Dr Pierre.

“The idea of national health insurance-funded universal healthcare is really good. We want it to be sustainable and we want it to have minimal disruption of the present structure as we know it. We also want to make maximum use of the present infrastructure. We have a lot of physicians and other providers who have other facilities which they may want to utilise for national heath insurance or for public patients and NHI will allow that. We also want it to be flexible so that moving forward more benefits will be added. We don’t want a complete breakdown of the system,” said Dr Pierre.

Dr Pierre further noted that an effective universal healthcare system is also dependent on the quality of physicians. “We want more Bahamian physicians to come home. What we are seeing quite often is Bahamian physicians who have trained in certain countries are opting not to come back home. If you don’t have the best physicians, the system won’t work.”

Having looked at the NHI Bill 2016, Dr Pierre told Tribune Business: “I took a look at the Bill. The Bill is actually quite good. Whenever you have large parties trying to come to some sort of agreement you are going to have disagreements. The governments mandate in a democratic and free society is that they would provide national health insurance funded universal health coverage. That is also our mandate. I think overall the Bill is not that bad.”