by Sidney Sweeting, DDS

According to a report in the Tribune of June 30 it is evident from the remarks of Dr. Bernard Nottage that the Government has already made a policy decision to proceed with NHI.

This blogger would like to have a poll taken of the members of Government and the Blue Ribbon Commisssion to find out how many of them are prepared to cancel or even renegotiate their private health insurance. The results, I am sure, would be both enlightening and frightening.

The general public would learn that the advocates of this ill-advised scheme are not prepared to put their lives and the lives of their loved ones at the mercy of a pig-in-the-poke health insurance plan. They will not be willing to give up what they will be forcing most of the general public and most businesses to give up. No business manager that this blogger has contacted is prepared to support both private health insurance and NHI , yet every single one has expressed deep concern about having to cancel their private plan. 

Is this not the same Government that the public elected to serve and protect them and are they serving and protecting by rushing into a health plan that has been criticised by the Bahamas Medical Association, insurance industry, the pharmacists and soon, the dentists?

Is it possible that the general public is being led to believe that the private health insurance companies will just hang around until this experiment fails, and fail it will, and provide a safety net. No, the public had better realize that once we get into this quagmire, when the lines at the clinics are growing, the beds are not available at the hospitals, essential drugs are in short supply, surgeries are postponed, CAT scans and MRI’s are rescheduled , then they will realize that they have been like the proverbial "sheep led to the slaughter". They will be in a health care nightmare.

Yet where is the voice of the people – the silence is deafening!