March 8, 2014

The following letter was sent to Health and Environment Minister Trevor Moniz and copied to The Royal Gazette.

Dear Minister Moniz,

I’m pleased to see the One Bermuda Alliance has finally come to realise Bermuda’s healthcare system needs to be revamped. According to the article in The Royal Gazette today, March 8th, you said, “This requires reforming our basic health package.”

You are undoubtedly aware that prior to the OBA coming into power, there was an independent (as in “non-political”) group of dedicated people examining the existing structure and tasked with formulating recommendations for exactly what you described, ie “reforming our basic health package” into what was to be called The National Health Plan (“NHP”). This group was comprised of dozens of people from every sector of the community and had invested at least two years in consultation with stakeholders working towards formulation of the NHP. Task Groups had been established looking into various sectors of the healthcare system such as: overseas care, long-term care, benefit design, finance & reimbursement, prevention, and information technology.

Guided by occasional input from outsiders, notably Government’s own actuarial consultants, and the knowledgeable Professor Marc Roberts of the Harvard School of Public Health, the NHP group was well on its way to success. It is indeed unfortunate that one of the first actions of the OBA government was to disband the group and stop the process. I happened to be one of its disappointed members; disappointed because all the good work was abandoned, that the forward momentum had stopped, and disappointed that now there has been a huge delay because like it or not the Government — any Government — has no choice but to come to grips with healthcare problems.

So you want to reform healthcare? Reconstitute the National Health Care group, dust off the analysis, the reports, and the recommendations and get on with it. There is no political downside.

PETER PARKER

St David’s