(CNS): The multiple problems associated with the failing health insurance system in Cayman was recently raised again in Finance Committee, but there are still no policy solutions on offer from the health minister. The original budget to cover tertiary healthcare costs for indigents and those with inadequate health cover for 2019 was CI$9.9 million but the actual cost ended up being almost $37 million as result of a CI$11.3 million addition last year and another CI$15 million voted in this latest change to the budget.

As legislators quizzed both Financial Secretary Kenneth Jefferson and Health Minister Dwayne Seymour, the magnitude of the cost to government to plug the gaps in the failing mandatory private health insurance system was revealed.

Chris Saunders, the opposition member for Bodden Town West, pointed out that, together with the payment on line item ‘NGS55’, there was likely to be millions more on the HSA’s subsidy from government to cover the unpaid bills of indigents at the hospital.

“The government cannot continue this,” he said. “This is a $50 million a year problem. This can’t continue… This is something we need to fix now.”

However the health minister had few solutions to offer as he described it as one of his “pet peeves”.

Seymour, who has been in office for three and a half years, told his committee colleagues that his ministry had “just done a presentation that may address some of this”, and that they were “going through the motions” to tackle what is a significant problem. Apparently agreeing with Saunders, he said that the Cayman Islands would “go bankrupt if we continue on this road”, though he had no policy solutions to reverse course.

Saunders called for the “whole model to be turned upside down”, and said said the main problem lay with the private sector insurance companies dumping retirees onto CINICO. He said that taxpayers should not be subsidizing a scheme that sees the private sector insurance companies covering workers when they are young and healthy, only to reject them when they need it most. CINICO must be allowed to expand and compete with the private sector to cover more people throughout their working lives and not just when they retire, he said.

“We have to move at some point to national health insurance,” Saunders stated. “We can’t keep dumping everything on government, and the private sector getting as rich as hell and the taxpayers getting stuck with all of this.”

He asked what it would take to expand CINICO and properly spread the risk currently being carried entirely by the government’s insurance company.

Finance Minister Roy McTaggart, who has responsibility for CINICO, said government had already commissioned an analysis of its operations and its expansion was under consideration. The consultants were expected to present their findings in October, he noted. However, concerns were raised that the consultants were from the same company that had conducted the review of a potential over 65s basic plan, which Minister Seymour had jettisoned when he learned the cost of the premiums for such a policy.

Answering Finance Committee questions on behalf of Minister McTaggart, who was chairing the committee, Jefferson said there was “absolutely no doubt” that what Saunders and other members had said was accurate and well received, as he outlined the magnitude of the costs subsidizing healthcare.

Government spends around $100 million, more than 20% of its annual budget, every year covering the healthcare costs of people who are either not insured or under-insured and this had to be addressed, Jefferson added.