By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

THE BAHAMAS Insurance Association yesterday criticised Prime Minister Perry Christie for opting to utilise a group of international healthcare experts over local professionals to examine his efforts on National Health Insurance. 

The BIA slammed Mr Christie for favouring international opinion over that of local professionals, adding that there is a “tremendous depth of local expertise” among Bahamian professionals that remains “untapped by a government determined to go it alone on NHI for reasons that they alone know”.

The BIA also slammed Health Minister Dr Perry Gomez for recently suggesting that insurance companies do not provide coverage for people suffering from illnesses found to stem from pre-existing genetic conditions. 

In denying Dr Gomez’s assertions, the BIA said in a statement that had the government relied on “sufficiently experienced persons”, such a “basic misstatement and misunderstanding would have been prevented”.

Ultimately, the BIA criticised the government for its approach to “intentionally mislead the public or broadcast inaccurate information to sell universal healthcare especially when the facts are easily verifiable”.

Last week, Mr Christie announced that he had requested that a group of healthcare experts from “Canada, United Kingdom and the United States” examine the government’s NHI scheme. 

Mr Christie did not reveal the identity of the group, however, nor did he indicate if the timeline for NHI implementation would be affected by their expected participation. However, the group is separate from the government’s current consultants, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Sanigest Internaçional. 

“While this is their prerogative, we lament the fact that in the BIA there is a tremendous depth of local expertise among Bahamian professionals that remains untapped by a Government determined to go it alone on NHI for reasons that they alone know,” the association said in its statement. 

The BIA also criticised Dr Gomez, who last week said: “One of the differences of private health insurance and NHI is manifestly obvious in the situation of breast cancer. If you have private health insurance and you get breast cancer and the insurance company finds out you have the gene for breast cancer they don’t pay for it, they don’t pay for your care because they say it is a pre-existing condition – you were born with that gene.”

“Under NHI that will not happen. NHI will cover everything,” Dr Gomez added.

“This statement is completely false and the honourable minister ought to know better,” the BIA responded. “It suggests that the government and its consultants are unfamiliar with the basic principles of insurance in general and the Bahamian insurance market in particular.

“No Bahamian health insurer conducts genetic testing, either as part of its underwriting or its claim adjudication process. A person who develops cancer while being covered for such a disease does not lose that coverage simply due to having a genetic mutation linked to higher prevalence of breast and ovarian cancer.

“If the minister has any evidence that his statement is true, we invite him to make that public. This highlights the importance of utilising local knowledge as had the government relied on sufficiently experienced persons, such a basic misstatement and misunderstanding would have been prevented.”

The BIA added: “If the government has inadvertently relied on incorrect information in their decision making, they need to correct it now. On a matter as important as universal healthcare, our government needs to ground its decisions on facts and not on falsehoods. 

“There is no need to intentionally or unintentionally mislead the public or broadcast inaccurate information to sell universal healthcare especially when the facts are easily verifiable.”