Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton speaks at the contract signing for the development of a national health plan for Jamaicans on December 6, 2017. The green paper on unviersal health care has now been tabled in Parliament for public discussion.

ADVISORY COLUMN: INSURANCE HELPLINE

Eight out of every 10 persons do not have access to private health insurance. This was one of the many things that I clearly recall after many readings of the Ministry of Health & Wellness’ 28-page green paper: National Health Insurance Plan for Jamaica.

Those two numbers provide an indication of the scale and complexity of the problems that will face the ministry as it moves into the project implementation phase. The ongoing road construction projects, collectively called the Major Infrastructure Development Programme will probably prove to be less difficult and disruptive to execute than NHIP.

The proposals reminded me of the article that I wrote on the subject – Actionise move towards universal health care – a few weeks before the February 2016 general elections. A sentence in it read: “Aspirants to political office should be talking about policies to achieve universal health coverage at their rallies instead of prancing about on platforms and spouting lyrics that promote violence”.

With that history and, when it is coupled with this column’s aim to disseminate information about risks and insurance, I believe that I would be doing a disservice to readers if I didn’t offer any comments on what MOHW says in the foreword to the paper is the “most transformative reform”. Its aim is to “increase overall resources for the health sector; increase efficiency in the use of available resources; promote sustainable health care financing and improve the quality and coverage of health services” that are delivered to residents of this island.

The drafters of the green paper have not learned at least one important lesson from the US Affordable Care Act experiment, called Obamacare. This is about the need to use easy-to-understand language in executing its communication strategy. Simple language would help to explain the contents of the proposal and explain details about the basic plan.

First-year law and medical students at the two tertiary institutions in Kingston 6 and 7 and some of the MBAs working with private health insurance providers will have difficulty understanding the paper if my experience with the document was used as an example. The paper does not encourage public feedback.

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