NHI a done deal! 'No changes' expected – IABVI’s Sarah E. Hatcher
This news site spoke exclusively with President of the Association Sarah E. Hatcher at a recent IABVI event during which she made the comments. Some months ago the Association in a press release pointed to a number of negative fallouts as a result of the implementation of the NHI as is.
“Obviously the insurance companies are trying to offer supplementary plans to assist alongside the National Health Insurance,” Hatcher said.
IABVI's challenges with NHI
With just a few months left to go the Association is hoping to understand more of the pricing structure with regards to what the healthcare providers are going to be offering.
She said that these costs are what the insurance companies would have to pick up should someone have a supplementary plan.
Hatcher said that costing and supplementary plans are the biggest challenges at the moment and the Association is trying to understand how they can actually work those out.
“Yes we have met with the National Health Insurance Team themselves and we have also met with the Permanent Secretary (of the Ministry of Health) to go through some of the concerns that we have,” she said.
“We know that the NHI is a reality so all of the meetings were constructed with a view to how we work alongside each other, how NHI is going to work and how supplementary plans for those who could afford them going to work,” she said.
Hatcher said that in terms of the construct of the NHI nothing is being changed as a result of the meetings.
“Obviously our aim now is to be as positive as we possibly can and to try and make it work as best as we possibly can because at the end of the day our customers are the ones that we will have to be thinking of,” she said.
“I know in the last day or so the NHI has released an update on the schedule of benefits to say what further coverage they are going to be doing so we have to analyse that compared to what we were doing,” he said.
Job losses
As had been spoken of in the Association’s press release, Hatcher is still concerned that there will be reductions in insurance companies’ staffing.
“We still envisage that we will be losing some staff,” she said as she voiced her concern about the possibility of job losses in the insurance sector as a result of the National Health Insurance.
“I think they understood what we were saying but I didn’t think that they felt there was anything that they could possibly do with regards to the losses of jobs,” she said.
She said that there are a lot of people who cannot afford both the National Health Insurance together with their private insurance so as a result there would inevitably be losses of jobs in the insurance industry.
Hatcher pointed out that while percentage wise the job losses expected seems high, this is only because the industry does not employ that many people.
Other protests to NHI
Meanwhile, among the many persons and groups expressing concern about the controversial NHI is the NHI Concerned Citizens and Residents Group, which had on October 13, 2015 submitted its petition against the National Health Insurance (NHI), along with a detailed letter, proposing a number of alternatives which it would like to see Government consider instead of the scheme in the current format.
The petition had garnered close to 1,000 signatures.
Premier Dr The Honourable D. Orlando Smith had said the petition and its recommendations were with a committee headed by Minister for Health and Social Development, Honourable Ronnie W. Skelton.
However, on December 1, 2015 the leading person behind the petition, Mr Natalio D. Wheatley, said that nearly two months on, the group had received no communication from Government on the number of measures proposed for what they believe would be the improving of the NHI Scheme.
“We hope that the government will be willing to consider the options we have put forward,” said Wheatley when contacted recently.
“We especially hope that the government will consider an NHI that is not compulsory and financed through different avenues.”
The fear of many, however, is that NHI was always “a done deal”- a phrase that has become synonymous with the policies of the National Democratic Party (NDP) Administration.
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NHI is hiring insurance workers.