My wife and I were away for a few days and came back to find several interesting news articles in the many newspapers left waiting.
One of the items that stood out was Dr. Bernard Nottage being quoted in The Nassau Guardian as saying the governing "FNM is not committed to NHI". While I don't believe that, I hope he is correct as many of the regular readers here know.
He also reportedly said that:
"There are people who genuinely do not believe that we do not have any responsibility for each other. Whereas we have a philosophy to provide them with the basic necessities of life. There are people who believe you sink or swim based on your own abilities and if you can't tough luck for you. That is a philosophical divergence from what we in the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) believe in".
He then went on to trash business people:
"They feel that if they have to make a contribution to the health insurance of their employees that this would detract form their profits and they say that they might go out of business".
It's not unusual for Dr. Nottage to attempt to portray himself as the saviour of all and sundry, and the business community as mean and nasty. While he was Minister of Health for a couple years under the last PLP administration, he made disparaging comments about them on a regular basis when they would offer constructive criticism about his NHI health scheme.
The other point that should not be overlooked is that the earnings from private businesses do not belong to the PLP or anyone other than the business owner. Dr. Nottage seems to think they belong to him and the PLP to divvy up as they see fit.
He also neglects to mention that his plan was designed to usurp private health care services into the government ambit.
Something else he does not mention is that he never allowed an independent review of the numbers used to "create his plan".
It's time for Dr. Nottage to ease off on the rhetoric and encourage those Bahamians that are employed to take care of themselves with a private health plan and then sell the idea of a plan to help the indigent and those people that might be denied health insurance for one reason or another.
