There is much commonality of health issues across the English-speaking Caribbean and this fact makes portable and easily transferable health insurance easier to implement than most fear.
University of the West Indies Chancellor Emeritus Sir George Alleyne holds the position that this sameness of medical complaints and general conditions among regional people makes the establishment of medical insurance schemes that are usable in any CARICOM country a realistic possibility.
But he expressed irritation that despite the existence of a scientific study supporting his position, the data were allowed to sit without any action being taken within CARICOM.
“I am chagrin that the initial work in this area has kind of gone low down in the bureaucratic file in CARICOM,” he said during a question and answer session after delivering the first of two UWI 70th Anniversary lectures in the Henry Fraser Theatre, Cave Hill Campus.
Sir George’s presentation on September 5 was titled The Perception and Place of Health in Caribbean Integration, and his comment was in response to questions from Home Affairs Minister Edmund Hinkson.
The Minister’s question was back-dropped by Barbados and seven others of the 15-member CARICOM group, during the Heads of Government meeting in July, signing the Protocol on Contingent Rights which seeks to grant regional citizens the rights to social services – including health – in whichever territory they may be legally working.
But this protocol that would enable smooth travel and work is not yet in force.
Hinkson noted that Prime Minister Mia Mottley had earlier that same day concluded a committee on this and related issues and said, “One of the problems is that the nationals of each country feel that their social services should be protected for nationals of that country… But clearly if we want to make a reality – and we certainly in Barbados want to – of real freedom of movement among nationals of our Caribbean countries, the issue of health services and access to health services and regional cost has to be addressed and has to be actualized.”
Hinkson asked Sir George for his ideas on how to move health service benefits from Trinidad or Guyana into Barbados. “Do we do it through private insurance, through National Insurance Schemes?
“Do we do it at no cost so that those services are made available to Caribbean nationals who have moved freely and legitimately under the provisions of the revised Treaty of Chagauramas and other provisions relating to the freedom of movement of CARICOM nationals so they have the same access to health services as nationals of the country?”
The UWI Chancellor Emeritus, a surgeon and professor of medicine who rose to become a two-term Director of the UN Pan-American Health Organisation, recalled that since 2002 when CARICOM heads had agreed that “The health of the region is the wealth of the region”, there was a Caribbean Development Bank-funded study on the feasibility of health insurance portability for CARICOM nationals legally working in other territories.
He said the study revealed such transfer of health insurance coverage is easily feasible but, “that [study] has laid fallow in CARICOM now for years”.
Sir George recommended the study be re-visited, “Because what it showed is that some of the concerns were not as real as people thought given the equivalence, almost, of many of the services and the commonality of disease patterns and the commonality of treatment schemes across the Caribbean”.
Sir George pointed out that while integrating health services of regional territories to the extent that nationals can travel with their coverage to other CARICOM countries appears a daunting prospect, the CDB-funded study reveals it is a real possibility.
“When the data is examined in some detail, there is less of a difference indeed for services across the region that we might imagine, given how common the epidemiological profile is across the Caribbean countries.”
Hopefully, the recommendation of one of the region’s foremost health academics and advisor to CARICOM could nudge the bureaucracy into action on this vital aspect of free movement of people across this Caribbean bloc. (GA)
I personally feel we should keep our fingers away from medical insurance for the simple reason is America can’t even get theirs in place and millions out of it. It’s not how medicine was intended now we are thinking of profits instead of saving the sick. I have to pay 600 monthly and I know Barbados cannot handled that burden at this time or anytime because we are too small and it will keep rising and later out of hand causing many to die without coverage… why do we have to follow bigger countries that exploit their own then it’s too late to change laws to ease or cover the unfortunate.
We’ve become to selfish and greedy, our health system should stay just where it is… as doctors not earning enough. My personal opinion is to keep that system out of our country or we will live to regret it, when prices rise no way to change anything.
I discovered that primary care is partly funded in Cuba by making it mandatory for every visitor landing or disembarking in the country to take out a general insurance policy at a rate between USD 2 and 3 (depending on extras) assuring them of priority treatment in the event of an accident or sudden illness at the local level before their airlift.