July 18, 2012Dear Sir,Sitting quietly by, listening to and reading about the accusations surrounding the inactivation of the GEHI dental coverage, I have become disgusted enough by the distortions and out and out lies, that I am compelled by a sense of fair play to speak out. I am writing this letter to inform your readership that the information Michael Dunkley presented was accurate and well informed. This letter does not address the question of premium payments. That is not public information.First, a few disclaimers. I am not a member of any political party: I do not care who governs Bermuda, so long as they govern well.Now some simple facts.1) The format of the reports that were shown in the media recently, is familiar. (They were obviously from two different sources, as can be determined if you look at the way the reports were printed.) They are reports printed directly from the BFM portal, that has been active for over a year, and is the portal BFM provided for health providers to check the status of insurance coverage for their patients. It is NOT a test portal in any way that has been mentioned to its users.2) Any dental office that accepts payment directly from the insurance company should have access to this portal. Any office that checked the status of coverage for GEHI patients the week of 02 July, would have found the GEHI dental coverage listed as “inactive — customer must contact their employer”. I must make an important point here. Any office that did NOT check the status of coverage last week would NOT have known about the problem. If the office was closed, or no GEHI patients came in that week, or if all of the GEHI patients seen were patients of record for whom their insurance status was assumed active, their coverage would NOT have been checked. Therefore, some offices would have been aware of the problem, and others would not have.3) Administrative staff from multiple offices, in response to the “Inactive” listings, called BFM and were told that the policies were inactive and that, if the August 1 deadline had passed, it would have been within the rights of the dental offices to demand “upfront” payments from these patients. We know that two patients have reported that this happened, and the full payment had to be made at the time of the dental appointment.4) As stated in point 3), multiple offices viewed the portal during the “inactive” period, and were aware of the status of the GEHI policies5) Fact: the redaction (the blacking out) of the documents, by whomever they were redacted, gave NO information that could be traced to any individual. A birthdate with no other information is NOT personally identifiable. Here is an example:February 12 1973. BD, R, O. Can anyone tell me to whom this refers? (As of February 2011, there were over 5,800 people working for the government. A birth date does not reveal the identity of anyone). The claims that “personally identifiable information” was visible is hysterical. There was no health information, or claims information or anything that could be interpreted as sensitive, associated with the documents. This is another case of “say it often enough and loud enough, and it will be perceived as fact”.In summary, the facts are:1) The BFM portal has been active for a long time.2) GEHI policy holders were shown as having “inactive” dental coverage.3) BF&M confirmed the “inactive” status.4) Multiple dental offices were aware of this.5) The issue of redaction was a complete red herring.Did the Government fail to pay the premiums? That is not public knowledge, unlike all of the information above. The Accountant General should have the answer to that question. This letter deals only with the facts at hand; the facts that many have at hand, but don’t want to admit.DEMOCRITUSPaget