KINGSTON, Jamaica (JIS) — Leader of the opposition in Barbados, Mia Mottley, says health care has become one of the largest growing expenditures in budgets in the Caribbean region.
“Caribbean governments will have to confront this reality,” Mottley emphasised.
The opposition leader noted that diversification of risks and pooling of resources are absolutely critical in order to be able to keep the cost down for citizens.
“The truth is that if we can come together to create a single market and economy, and if we have the same (insurance) companies in the north as we do in the south, then the issue of an appropriate level of regulation as well as cost structuring ought to be on the table, to ensure that access to healthcare through affordable health insurance premiums becomes one of the things with which our governments are primarily concerned,” Mottley said.
She added that insurance companies have a responsibility to work with the governments to see how best products can be pooled to ensure that Caribbean citizens are able to afford access, particularly in their elderly years when they are not earning an income, but living off a pension.Citing Sweden as an example where, irrespective of age, the basic premium for access to health insurance remains the same, Mottley said the region has a duty to see how best it can give access to affordable health insurance to the five million people living in the English-speaking Caribbean.
“We need to see how best we can work with the established companies to be able to ensure that premiums become affordable by increasing the size of the number of persons who are covered,” she added.
