‘Help Achieve Affordable, Accessible Healthcare’
The Minister of Health Kim Wilson met today with members of the Health Financing Reform Stakeholder Consultation Group, which is tasked with providing feedback to the Government on “options being considered to help achieve affordable and accessible healthcare for all.”
A Ministry spokesperson said, “The purpose of the Ministry’s Health Financing Reform initiative is to deliver Goal 9 of the Bermuda Health Strategy [BHS], whose Mission is ‘To provide affordable and sustainable healthcare for all Bermuda residents.’
“Goal 9, in particular, is that ‘Bermuda’s health system shall be financed through the most cost-effective means available to reduce complexity and duplication and improve efficiency.’
“The role of the Health Financing Reform Stakeholder Consultation Group is to review the financing options and analysis prepared in the 2012 Report on a Health Financing Structure, and provide feedback to the Ministry about how the options presented may impact the people of Bermuda and, more specifically, key stakeholder groups.
“More information about the Health Financing Reform initiative is available on the Government website here.”
How does dramatically increasing the cost of imaging help to reduce healthcare costs?
It only makes sense if you drink enough titty milk. Clearly you haven’t had your daily intake!! Ha ha ha!!
Perhaps we reduce the number of scans to something more in line with the rate in other countries.
So the PLP’s plan is to reduce healthcare services, similar to how they reduced bus services, and trash collection services. All while increasing costs. Got it.
Talk, talk and let’s talk some more. Talk don’t pay the bills, increased bills and taxes. Let’s see some action and I don’t mean sugar tax action!
This will be another project like gambling, no result in the hear future.
Keep making payments of 1.2 mill will help though.
What a joke. One group tries to reduce costs but when that takes money out of PLP members pockets it is reversed. This government is not serious about reducing health costs and improving health care in Bermuda.
Does govt. require consumer advocacy sensitivity classes or what?
For domicile and worldwide profit you would think insurance would be reflective of that we are only fifty five thousand or so.
1. Increase the population to spread the cost (see also falling retail sales, decline in economy etc etc).
2. Stop providing handouts to former Premiers.
here’s a radical idea, stop subsidizing rich doctors! another one: don’t let dentists and insurers use the Ontario fee schedule when deciding the cost to be covered for their services! final one: make preventative services like annual physicals and bi-annual teeth cleanings absolutely free for everyone!
No one really cares about healthcare costs until they or a loved one gets very sick. Then they realize all the money paid into insurance is nothing compared to ridiculous copays and fees. And let’s not talk about the substandard medical care and misdiagnoses here.
My suggestion that I have floated with many in the local health insurance market is to offer as one option “catastrophic coverage”.
Essentially, as Blue Cross offers in the U.S., I pay a very low monthly premium but am fully responsible for all health costs up to say $3,000 per annum. After that insurance kicks in at 100%.
In other words, if I had cancer or needed open heart surgery etc, my insurance company would cover but all smaller incidentals like office visits and RX etc would be covered by me until I reached $3,000 in any given year.
This would discourage individuals from over using health care because we feel we pay such an exorbitant amount”we might as well go to emergency at KEMH as there is no co pay”.
It is completely set up to encourage us to use services more rather than dissuading wherever possible.
I am told that Government has legislated what must be covered so the insurance companies hands are tied.
Come on Government, this would save locals thousands of dollars per year in premium payments and it’s not complicated.
Any actuaries on the panel? The elephant in the room is that even without paying wealthy ex-premiers and tinkering with rates, and reducing the amount of mac n cheese we eat, there simply aren’t enough of us to support our needs.
It’s like she is Dr. Jeckle one minute (here for example) and then she turns “Mrs. Hyde” in support of huge payments to her former boss.
Renee Webb was like that, she would trumpet the close connection Bermuda had to the English legal framework and highlighted the ability of an appeal to the Privy Council in civil matters under it while speaking at an ecommerce conference in London one week, but she would be back in Bermuda chatting about the need for Independence the next week.
Smh if big business wasn’t feeding us Trash from the start ,maybe we wouldn’t need expensive health care. They’re the ones profiting whilst we fight and die amongst ourselves!
Well that headline is an oxymoron.
Everytime we need a solution increasing our population states us in the face.
Walton where are you?????
“The role of the Health Financing Reform Stakeholder Consultation Group is to review the financing options and analysis prepared in the 2012 Report on a Health Financing Structure, and provide feedback to the Ministry about how the options presented may impact the people of Bermuda and, more specifically, key stakeholder groups.”
This was analyzed at the end of 2012, prior to the election, when Zane DaSilva was Heath Minister. The working group at the time said that the PLP plan, which was put together by Jennifer Attride-Sterling (now P.S.) and others, would bankrupt Bermuda. The analysis was so discouraging that the PLP didn’t even include the report’s recommendations in their election platform. I can’t see how further analysis would change that original actuarial advice. Healthcare financing is tremendously difficult to understand, and the current Minister of Health is a lawyer with no healthcare experience. She will rely entirely on the advice of her P.S. and others who got it very wrong the first time.