Nat’l Health Insurance to cost Gov’t $38M annually – Hon. Skelton
This is according to Minister for Health and Social Development, Hon. Ronnie Skelton in an interview with Virgin Islands News Online on Monday, February 20, 2012.
“You know health care is a very expensive operation and there is no country in the world that it is not subsidized, so Government will have to play its part in subsiding the scheme and depends on what scheme is taken up – full or partial – we will go to the full scheme that is somewhere like around 38 million dollars on an annual basis,” Hon. Skelton revealed.
Asked if that is a hefty sum amidst the economic difficulties, the Health Minister responded, “We are doing that now, it sounds like a lot of money but we are pumping that level of money into health care right now. So it is not something that Government can’t do, you will just have an insurance company now where the monies is funnelled through,” he added.
According to the Minister, several meetings were held with the consultants, and it is now at a stage where “some basic things need to be happening like having the personnel to operate and manage the system”.
“We have passed it on to the Social Security Board for its operation and it will be a segregated part of Social Security where the Director will create the unit inside Social Security just for the National Health Insurance,” he divulged to this news agency.
And due in part that the public has to be educated, the scheme will take about 12 months before it can be put into action, Hon. Skelton further stated, because it calls for the technology to be in place and have discussions with other insurance companies.
Meanwhile, the ball was set in motion for the scheme in March 2010 when the then Premier Ralph T. O’Neal OBE, and former Minister for Health Dancia Penn QC, had signed an agreement with the University of the West Indies to perform professional consulting services to design and support the implementation of a National Health Insurance System.
At the signing, Hon. O’Neal cited the urgent need for a national health insurance system, saying his Government was keen to see the new programme “not only on stream, but in stream in 2011.”
He had acknowledged the current difficult economic climate and said signing of the new agreement may be considered ironic, however, he maintained that the benefits of the NHIS would be significant. “Critics only make the Government more determined to do what is best for the people,” Hon. O’Neal had said, while reiterating the benefits that would be enjoyed by people in the Territory via the NHIS.
In 2005, on the request of the Government of the Virgin Islands, the University of the West Indies, Health Economic Unit (HEU) conducted a study on the Economic Feasibility of a National Health Insurance System for the Territory.
And in August 2009, Cabinet had accepted the HEU’s proposal for the completion of the design and implementation of the NHIS.
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