300,000 health insurance policy holders is a drop in the bucket for several of North America's largest health insurance providers. Common sense says our government would be way ahead of the game in terms of cost and quality of healthcare for Bahamians if our nation's healthcare needs were lock stock and barrel turned over to health insurers and healthcare providers operating in Florida. The additional airfare and any hotel accommodation costs for Bahamians to receive medical treatment in Florida, whether it be of the preventative care kind or urgent hospitalization kind, are insignificant in relation to the outrageously high healthcare costs being charged by providers of medical services here in the Bahamas. A colonoscopy at a reputable hospital or clinic in Florida costs less than half of what the exact same procedure costs here in Nassau, and the same applies to many other basic preventative care or emergency (intensive) care procedures. Why should our government try to invent a costly universal healthcare system in the Bahamas when all it has to do is tap into (or piggyback on) the U.S. healthcare insurance system and healthcare provider system that already exists in the State of Florida at costs much more reasonable than could ever be obtained here in the Bahamas? Bahamian medical doctors, healthcare specialists, medical technicians and skilled nurses could be given the opportunity of running emergency care mini clinics in the Bahamas to stabilize critical care patients before their transport to Florida, or could emigrate to Florida to be a part of the preferred healthcare provider systems catering to the universal healthcare needs of all Bahamians. It's all about economies of scale when it comes to keeping healthcare costs to the minimum for quality healthcare. This cannot be achieved in the Bahamas with a relatively small population of individuals requiring preventative and urgent or critical emergency care on an annual basis. Whatever Sanigest is proposing as a National Healthcare Scheme is poppy cock to say the least! The biggest driver of excessive costs for our current healthcare model, that only caters to those of us who can afford the outrageously high monthly insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays, are the local health insurers. The very burdensome combined administration costs and profits of all local healthcare insurers presently licensed to operate in the Bahamas is a most heavy albatross around the neck of every Bahamian in need of quality healthcare at a reasonable cost.

Let Cable Bahamas begin its "price dumping" as you call it DonAnthony. We Bahamians are tired of paying the exorbitant $30 a month ($360 a year) they charge, exclusive of VAT, for the lousy few channels in their basic cable TV service package.

At the time they prepared the 2015/16 annual budget, Christie and Halkitis knew full well that the Bahamian employees of Baha Mar who were to be so generously assigned (at Baha Mar's expense) to the Urban Renewal Project would quickly end up on the government's payroll rather than remain on Baha Mar's payroll. Everything that has been done so far here has been nothing but a ploy to allow Robin Hood (Christie) and his merry bandits (the other members of Christie's cabinet) to save face and buy votes for the PLP in the next general election. This is why Christie and Halkitis allocated an additional $20 million to Urban Renewal in the 2015/16 annual budget - they knew the money would be needed to pay ongoing wages and salaries to many of the Bahamian workers that Baha Mar could no longer afford to employ. Christie had no choice but to dodge his contribution to the debate on the budget in the House of Assembly because he knew he had intentionally deceived the Bahamian people in his written budget communication and speech about the extent and severity of the problems at both Baha Mar and the Bank of The Bahamas (BOB). Christie knew his words in a budget debate could easily come back to haunt him in a most vicious way. Well before they finalized the 2015/16 budget, Christie and Halkitis had full knowledge about the extent and severity of the problems at both Baha Mar and BOB and their implications for the country's 2015/16 finances and the government's unrealistic economic forecasts. But true to form, the opposition led by Minnis failed in their contributions to the budget debate to call out Christie and Halkitis for their willful deception of the Bahamian people regarding the extent and severity of the problems.

Quite a bit of truth here unfortunately. Instead of creating decent paying jobs, the Christie-led PLP government's failed social and economic policies have in fact resulted in the failure or downsizing of many local businesses. The marked contraction or shrinkage in the employment of Bahamians by our domestic private sector work force has greatly exacerbated the over-crowding effect on our economy of our non-productive and inefficient bloated public sector work force. Robin Hood (Christie) and his merry bandits have no inkling of the greater harm being caused to our economy by their continued efforts to buy votes using an ever dwindling supply of taxpayers' dollars. Another 5,000 plus new graduating students are about to join the ranks of all those for whom jobs are not available in the private sector. The creation of additional unnecessary, non-productive and/or inefficient public sector jobs, combined with public sector handouts, cannot continue without irreparably crushing our economy and ripping apart its social fabric.

The Tribune's Editor will simply say it's all about business. The Editor and owners of The Tribune will tell you that If their competitors in the print and other media can accept money from the web shops, then they should be able to do likewise. You have to remember who the Editor is and who now owns The Tribune!

Small wonder China is making such great in roads of influence in small countries like ours with limited financial resources. Whereas the Chinese generally offer a lot and ask for very little in return, the U.S. and OECD/EU countries typically ask for a lot and give very little in return. Why the hell are we enforcing on our dime the taxation laws of other countries that would not have so many tax cheats if their taxation laws were fairer or their governments were smaller, more productive and efficient to allow for much lower taxation rates?!

Here we have a publicly listed bank, majority-owned and controlled by the Christie-led PLP government, that is imploding right before our very eyes. And this is after the Christie-led PLP government has already recently used $32 million of the people's National Insurance funds and issued $100 million in bonds on the backs of taxpayers in a failed effort to prop up Bank of The Bahamas ("BOB"). We are told by that McWeeney scoundrel as he leaves BOB, that BOB's liabilities are now equal to its assets which means all of BOB's shareholders' equity has been wiped out. In other words, the two-thirds (2/3's) of BOB owned by the Christie-led PLP government through investments of the National Insurance Board, etc. and the one-third (1/3) of BOB owned by its minority shareholders (investors in the Bahamian public) are now essentially worthless. The losses racked up here on the backs of all Bahamians (except of course Christie's political friends and business cronies who still have not repaid the millions of dollars in loans they received from BOB) are simply a staggering amount. The moral hazard implications of BOB's implosion are great because many other borrowers (not only from BOB) will now deliberately default on their loans even if they have the ability to repay them, taking their cue from the senior politicians and their business cronies who have made out like bandits by not repaying their own loans received from BOB. Sitting smugly in the House of Assembly are several senior politicians with businesses or family members and very close friends who have either out rightly defaulted on their loans received from BOB or had their borrowings restructured on such generous terms that they are no longer profitable for BOB today. No doubt certain politically-connected loans were transferred from BOB to Bahamas Resolve no matter that McWeeney and others have claimed otherwise. As we have seen time and time again, nothing these scoundrels say can be believed and with good reason; they have been strongly financially motivated to deceive the Bahamian public. Our government probably borrows at rates of interest much higher than the rates these politically connected scoundrels pay on their borrowings. The entire BOB affair should be the subject of a Royal Commission of Inquiry brought about by mass demonstrations (if need be) of the Bahamian people who have been fleeced by horribly corrupt politicians.

The leadership issues confronting the FNM today are a direct result of Hubert Ingraham's failure to take succession planning seriously at anytime during his stints as PM. But the FNM can take some comfort in knowing that Christie, like Ingraham, is much too self-infatuated to think seriously about identifying and grooming his successor. This is a most vexing problem for Bahamian voters!

Are you trying to give Rubis some kind of free pass here? While harmfully high concentrations of radon gas may indeed exist in areas of karst (limestone) topography, it is less common in such areas. Until now, I haven't heard anything about the residents of Sandyport encountering higher incidents of cancer.

Some say the Colina group may be taking a serious look at BOB as a possible acquisition target. I can't imagine Michele Fields (our Insurance Commissioner) being happy about that, but hopefully she's proves to be much smarter than Wendy Craigg was as a regulator. Wendy's reputation has been royally sullied by her failure to expeditiously act on the lending problems at BOB when they first became known to her.