fp Turks and Caicos

The National Insurance Board “strongly disagrees” with a decision last month by the governor and his Advisory Council for the board to transfer $10 million to government for the National Health Insurance Program to pay for the board’s underpayment of health care costs in the past.

“The NIB board and management believes that the government should solve its debt and health care issues through a different approach than simply taking the people’s pension funds and using them as a stop gap measure to fund the financial crisis,” the board says in a statement posted on its website (www.tcinib.tc).

His Excellency the Gov. Ric Todd defended the decision, saying “It is not true that the government is taking money from the NIB.”
“These are very important, complicated technical issues. They really are not suitable to be discussed polemically in public, and I am determined that we should continue to discuss these issues in calm, rational and technocratic way to come up with the right solutions for people of this country.”

In addition to having a fund to pay pensions to retirees, the NIB has a fund to pay for health care costs for worker injuries. A recent actuarial review of the NIB showed that it has paid very little to government for those costs since 1992. As a result, that fund has accumulated a $20 million surplus.

Government is currently trying to solve a more than $40 million annual deficit in paying for health care.

The NIB says it has paid $50,000 every year from 1992 to 2009 to government for those workers injuries, even though government had never submitted claims for actual costs. When government submitted its first request in 2009 for $837,000, the NIB and government agreed that amount would satisfy NIB’s total indebtedness to government for 1992-2009, according to the NIB.

When the NHIP was formed two years ago, it was required to submit claims to NIB to receive payment for covered treatment, and NIB paid $612,000 for those claims in 2010-11.

However, the actuary said that NHIP does not produce bills for specific services provided, and the InterHealth Canada hospitals “may not even know that the patient being treated is someone ordinarily covered by the NIB.”

“To determine whether or not the amount transferred is reasonable, the (NIB) should monitor the treatment provided to its claimants at InterHealth Canada facilities and get frequent reports so that in two to three years, a good estimate of the costs associated with treating injured claimants can be obtained,” the actuary recommended.